Black King White Knight
by Sunbird Riding Shotgun
Summary: An ex insurance investigator turned Black King and a retrieval specialist turned the team's white knight protector. Neither is particularly stable by any definition, but somehow they make it work. A series of Nate/Eliot one-shots and drabbles.
1. Trust

**Notes: **I've had this series of stories going on Live Journal for awhile and I figured I might as well bring them over here. There will be a lot of variation in length and style to these stories (some drabblish, some one shots, a few minor story arcs here or there). But they are self referencing and in somthing along the lines of a specific order so I figured they'd be easier to follow if posted as many chapters to a single story. I'll be posting them pretty regularly until we're caught up with live journal.

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**Trust**

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When it came down to it the relationship was really about trust.

From those first hellish weeks in that prison near Cairo, to that meandering chess match and their cat and mouse game across Europe a few years later, to Chicago and everything since they've constantly been putting trust in each other whether or not it was smart. Even now, laying together in a dark room, sleeping without one hand wrapped around a knife like Eliot used to always do, they put their lives in each others hands just by that mutual trust.

It's strange really, how many of his own rules Eliot's broken since joining the team. The others know where he lives, have access to the things he eats and drinks, can track him easily. Somehow none of that makes him paranoid.

And then there's Nate. They don't just practically live together now, sharing a condo while both keeping their own apartments, they share a bed. Nate's been doing the grocery shopping since Eliot started cooking for the two of them. Nate was the one who finally convinced Eliot to get a tracking device implanted beneath the skin at the base of his ear so that if he ever got captured they might have an easier time with a rescue.

And all of that? It made him feel safe.

He, a man famous among criminal's for the sheer violence he was capable of, feels safest when he's no more than a breath away from an ex-insurance investigator who can't decide if he's a black king, white knight, or both in equal terms.

It's late at night now, the tension of the day and the job worked off in a way that's left a content grin across Eliot's face when he remembers it. Nate was sleeping now, naturally and not the stone dead drunken unconsciousness that came with alcohol.

Nate was drinking less these days, though Eliot didn't bother himself with wondering if it was the job or love that was making the world a little more bearable.

They didn't really call this love anyway. They were both too broken and twisted for something as innocent as that. Love was for young couples and innocent people who didn't hurt people for a living, who weren't still fighting the urge to blow their own brains out sometimes, who hadn't lost a son or entire family. Love wasn't for people who lived in their world.

This wasn't love. This was comfort. This was protection against the nothingness they saw looming in each other's eyes. This was existing and knowing you existed because someone else was there in the dark of night to hold you when the world threatened to stop.

This was the only thing that made sense to them anymore.

The arms around Eliot tightened. Nate's breath against the back of his neck quickened and turned ragged. Eliot broke away and turned, stroking a hand through man's hair, soothing away a threatening nightmare. Even asleep Nate calmed under his touch.

Trust.

They may be too damaged to call this love.

But trust? That was enough for now.


	2. Rules of Engagement

**Notes**: Beware posion dart frogs that come and mess up your story's formatting. They're really annoying.

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**Rules of Engagement**

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It started somewhere between a joke, a promise, a demand, and a need to speak out loud to be sure that they both understood the requirement.

_The first rule is control. We can share it, trade it, give or take it, but someone always has to have it._

It was a necessity. That violence inside Eliot that made him such a capable fighter had long since become almost a separate entity in his mind. He controlled it, and as long as Eliot was in charge the body count was limited to those he deliberately went after. It had been years since he'd let that control go completely but the carnage he'd wreaked still haunted him. The fact that those around him, Nate and those he thought of as family, would never stand a chance against that force drove that need for control further.

In a relationship, something Eliot hadn't had in years, coming to care about people in just as long, he couldn't afford a single slip up. Relationships, companionship, trust, this thing with Nate were all wonderful but they put your guard down. Having his guard down was a luxury Eliot couldn't afford and if it ever meant control was lost he'd have to drop everything.

It was haphazard at first, joking rules with deeper meaning, mocking commentary on their relationship. It was something to fill silence with, something to laugh about. The rules were never really supposed to be a coherent list.

They'd been together for nearly four months when Eliot was scrounging around Nate's desk at his apartment for something he forgot completely when he found the little legal pad and it's neat little numbers and lines. Somewhere along the line Nate had started taking down their "rules of engagement"

1. Control. We can share it, trade it, give or take it, but someone must always have it.

2. Trust.

3. Eliot is no longer allowed to threaten death via office supplies to any team mate. He may only threaten marks with them when they flirt with Nate as long as it doesn't raise suspicions.

4. When Eliot cooks Nate dinner Eliot must let Nate do the dishes.

5. When Nate drinks himself sick he is not allowed to feel guilty later for forcing Eliot to stay up all night to make sure he doesn't die of alcohol poisoning. He will however buy Eliot new boots and/or knives for his troubles.

6. Don't bother Eliot when he's cooking. Especially if he's doing it to calm down to avoid losing his temper and harming you. Especially if he's holding a knife.

7. Always close the blinds unless you want to encourage Parker's voyeurism.

8. Whatever you do, don't let Sophie find out.

9. If rule 8 is broken be sure to disappear before she can start in as a woman scorned. Even Eliot isn't a match for that.

10. Always let Eliot know you're there before touching him. Never restrain him even as a joke. Watch him when you try something new. Keep him talking if you're worried, his speech pattern changes when distressed no matter how hard he tries to hide it.

11. If Eliot isn't comfortable with something he has to say something.

12. If Eliot doesn't say something and Nate triggers a flashback Nate is not allowed to feel guilty since it's not his fault Eliot is an idiot.

13. If Nate breaks rule 12 Eliot's not allowed to get annoyed or feel guilty that Nate feels guilty or that he didn't trust Nate or for any other conceivable reason.

14. Eliot likes horses. Movies about horses are an entirely different matter.

15. Threatening every liquor store clerk and bar keeper in a twenty mile radius is an admirable attempt to curb Nate's drinking but ultimately a waste of an afternoon.

16. "Go skip some rope" is a good way to ensure you will be sleeping on the couch for a couple weeks.

17. Say the things you want to say. You might not get a chance to say them later. But don't say That Thing.

18. Good manners are important.

19. No mixing pleasure with business.

20. Even though you don't say That Thing, find ways to make sure he knows.

21. L-

"What are you looking at?" Nate asks, interrupting Eliot's reading and obeying rule 10. He comes over, glancing over Eliot's shoulder and smiling. "I started writing them down awhile ago. They're good things to remember."

Eliot put the paper back down and glanced up at Nate, standing a little bit closer than rule eight advised. He was about to say something when Nate came even closer, a hand resting on Eliot's arm pulling him to turn toward Nate. There was no stench of alcohol on him right now, a rare treat to have Nate fully there with him.

"Got you something you might like." Nate said, a teasing smile on his face. "Picked up Seabisscut and Dreamer. Figured we could have a movie night." Nate said it so casually Eliot actually sputtered as he searched for a response before he caught the idea Nate was kidding. "Then I saw a movie I thought you'd like better." Nate revealed a beat up looking VCR home video labeled "Shane". It was a cowboy classic Eliot had been sure Hardison could have gotten him a dvd of in about a minute if Eliot had been willing to deal with the jokes it would open him up to.

Wordlessly Eliot gave Nate a brief kiss and led him toward the living room. A night without having to fight liquor for Nate's attention, Nate knowing instinctively the perfect movie to find for him, the comfortable silence between them…

Looked like Nate was doing fine at following through rule 20. Even if it was far to cliché and innocent for two broken and battered men like them neither had much trouble letting the other know this was love.

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	3. Scars

**Notes: **This is the first in a short series within a series of one-shots.

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**Scars**

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The team learned very quickly not to ask Eliot about his scars. At the best of times he'd sigh, get an annoyed look and give some explanation that even Parker could tell had been made up. Other times he'd glare. If you did manage to get a story out of him he'd withdraw afterwards, back into his head and the dark places he'd been.

Nate didn't ask, he knew some wounds never really healed and prodding them like that would only bring back the pain.

But his curiosity burned every time he saw those scars and after he found himself sharing a bed with the retrieval specialist he took to learning those scars, memorizing every mark life had left on Eliot. He could recognize some easily enough, he knew from the scars on his own shoulders what bullets left, though the 14 bullet scars Eliot carried made Nate's shoulder hurt to see. There were knife marks, marks left by surgery, marks left by whips... Too many marks left by whips.

Nate's fingers traced the scars that crisscrossed Eliot's back. He never asked, he knew Eliot didn't like talking about the past and especially not times when he'd been hurt so badly. Still Nate always wondered who had hurt Eliot like this and something burned in his stomach he wasn't sure what to do with.

Beneath his hand Eliot sighed, lingering on the edge of sleep. "A prison camp in Croatia. I got caught, spent a couple months there before I escaped." Eliot said softly, breaking the silence himself. "Guards'd sooner beat ya than look at you. Kept you too weak ta fight back. Barely escaped alive."

After that Nate tried to balance his curiosity with patience. Eliot started to explain the scars he bore but nearly all had a story of pain and shame, of captivity and humiliation that left dark lingering behind bright blue eyes.

Nate didn't understand why Eliot would allow himself to be drawn back like that at first. It wasn't until a client asked about his scars and Eliot simply shrugged off the question Nate started to realize. In the telling Eliot wasn't reliving old pain, he was bleeding it off, putting old ghosts to rest and maybe finally leaving those dark places truly behind him.

Some wounds never really healed but maybe his were starting to.


	4. Rules, Scars, and Kitchen Knives

**Notes: **This is a follow-up to "Scars"

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**Concerning New Rules, Old Scars, and Kitchen Knives**

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It wasn't long after Nate realized getting Eliot to tell the stories of his scars was helping him heal a little that Nate started to develop some rules for it. He was an honest man after all, and an honest man was only honest if he had rules. It kept him from doing something stupid.

The first rule was control, of course, though in this case it meant controlling his curiosity. Only one scar a night, he didn't want to push Eliot's trust in him too much. The second was never on a job since sometimes bad scars meant Eliot had nightmares afterwards and was distracted the next day and they couldn't afford to have Eliot not be on his game. The last was only when he was sober.

That last rule came the hard way.

It was a little under a month since they'd first talked at night about those whip marks. The team had finished a job the night before after nearly a week and a half and Nate had fallen back to drinking for reasons that may or may not have had something to do with the fact Eliot's half of the bed was always empty when they were on a job.

Eliot had a very strict interpretation of not mixing business with pleasure.

Nate had been drunk when Eliot had come to the apartment they shared. Drunk, and more than ready to make up for a lost week and a half.

He'd been too drunk to notice Eliot's distaste, the way he kept pulling away from Nate when Nate got close enough that Eliot could smell the liquor on his breath. He didn't notice how the man who was normally all to ready for whatever Nate was in the mood for was holding back and uninterested. It wouldn't be until later that Nate would realize the only reason Eliot was there in the first place was for all he said about not caring if Nate drank himself to death Eliot felt responsible for keeping him and their family together.

Nate didn't remember the sex, if they'd even had it. He didn't remember what had gotten him to remember to ask Eliot about this night's scar.

What he did remember of the night he almost wished he could forget.

The scar he'd picked was old, faded, a knife wound that looked like it might have come from Eliot's early days, maybe even before he'd made it to the big leagues. "This one." He'd said, tracing it from right shoulder to mid chest until it faded too much for him to follow.

Eliot breathed in closed his eyes and let out the breath slowly. Nate noticed his face twitched a little and he turned away, as close to refusing to answer as he'd come since they started this.

Nate traced the thin line of the scar again, trying to sooth the hitter's nerves, trailing the finger with soft kisses that normally caused Eliot to respond in all the best ways.

Instead Eliot pulled away, sliding over and sitting up so Nate wasn't touching him. "I got it three days after I turned twenty one." His voice was soft and hard at the same time. Nate could almost hear him focusing on self control as he answered the question. Eliot always answered Nate's questions, even times like these when it was clear he just wanted to be gone. "I was workin' as a bruiser for some small town crime boss when he decided I was gettin' to good at what I did. He sent seven of his guys to take me out. Before they killed me they wanted to know what I'd been doing with my cuts of the take since I barely spent any I didn't have to. Spent three days tied to a chair getting' real familiar with a cattle prod before I broke loose. Took 'em down but they got me with a knife. Nearly bled out."

Nate sat up and crawled over, wrapping his arms around Eliot for only a fraction of a second before Eliot broke away and turned to look at Nate, his eyes hardest. "Seven guys, three days, enclosed space. The smell of beer and whiskey got so thick I couldn't drink either for years."

Nate stopped moving and drew back, feeling sick to his stomach in ways that had nothing to do with the beers or whiskey that had been part of today's regiment.

Eliot got up and found his clothes, redressing quickly. He didn't say a word as he left. They didn't talk about it when they saw each other in the offices the next day either. They didn't mention it that night when they met at the apartment again. It wasn't until the set of shiny new kitchen knives Eliot had taken intrest in on the job appeared where the old set had been that either of them acknowledged what had happened.

Eliot picked up a knife, gave Nate a look somewhere between exasperation and gratitude before he turned to start chopping up some chicken for dinner.

A new set of knives he saw every night as he lingered in the kitchen while Eliot cooked and an old faded scar than seemed so much sharper than the others too him. Two reminders to an honest man that there were rules to follow for a reason.


	5. Good Men

**Note:** Last is this little story arc for the moment (I may have one more fic involving this in the works but it'll be awhile before we get to that). Never fear though, there is more to come.

**Note the second:** This is actually the orgin of the idea that led to Cell Number Eight, which I should be posting the next chapter of any day now...

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**Good Men**

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Fingers ran across his skin, the sensation fading in and out as they passed over nerveless scar tissue, tormenting and relaxing in turn. Eliot closed his eyes, the iron tight control beginning to unwind under Nate's efforts to calm him. There was need there, they both felt the urge to bypass this and skip ahead to the fun part, but this part was important.

Every night they spent together since Eliot had first told Nate about the origins of the scars left by the whips of the guard's in that cursed Croatian prison camp they've practiced a strange ritual. The lights dimmed, the doors locked, the windows open to let in air but hidden behind blinds and curtains they'd lie together and let the silence stretch between them, touches comforting but demanding nothing more than contact. When Eliot was unwound enough, let himself drift enough to let his guard down and let Nate keep watch for awhile Nate would find a scar and Eliot would tell the story.

And sometimes it drew a dry grin to Eliot's lips as he recalled the time when after avoiding death at the hands of mobsters and crime lords he nearly lost a arm to a nasty tempered poodle or that time he fought a midget assassin who may or may not have killed people by making them laugh themselves to death.

And sometimes Eliot wouldn't remember the origin and he'd see a dark look in Nate's face when the older man considered the idea that Eliot was so used to being hurt he didn't remember why or when someone had shot him.

But sometimes the memories brought back were vivid, painful, taking the calm and shaking him. With his guard down he had no defense against the reminder of what had been done to him and the telling would leave the wounds raw and bleeding again. Nate would hold him, just like once long ago, not as a lover but as a protector, and even though when morning came he'd be the teams hitter again for a little while Eliot would process, and feel, and maybe those old wounds would heal correctly this time. Really heal, not just scab over and wait to be torn open again.

"This bullet scar." Nate said interrupting Eliot's thoughts. He traced a finger around the edge of a scar left by a bullet that had gone into his side.

Eliot glanced at it, considering for a moment as his mind traveled back nine years. He shot Nate a look, wondering what he was playing at until he realized Nate really didn't know this was that scar. "You should remember this one." Nate matched Eliot's expression a moment before the finger faltered and fell away, replaced a moment later by arms that seemed just as strong as they had nearly nine years ago.

Nine years ago when they met.

Eliot was barely twenty five, it was less than a month after he'd escaped after spending three painful months in Nishka's dungeons only to return to Willy's ranch to find Ammie engaged to someone else. Eliot had been stupid, he was barely functional and no condition to have taken any job, not to mention the one he had. It was suicidal, but that had been the point. Nothing really had been real or made sense right then. Later he'd pick up enough psychology to know he'd been suffering from a very bad case of post traumatic stress disorder but at the time he'd been so disconnected, so paranoid, and hypersensitive he was like a walking time bomb.

At the time what Eliot had understood was a job in Cairo had gone very far south and he'd ended up thrown into some cell with a dirt floor belonging to someone Eliot didn't even remember. He remembered the ten kinds of messes he'd been. The welts and burns and bruises from the torture he'd suffered in Nishka's dungeons weren't quite healed, he'd been bouncing between disassociation and terror at being a captive again, freshly wounded from the fight that got him caught, and still hurting from Ammie. It wasn't the lowest point he'd been but it was close.

To this day Eliot still didn't know how long he'd spent in that dirt cell, sick from infected wounds and unable to care enough to try to escape, when fate gave him a cellmate in the form of an insurance investigator who was having one hell of a bad day.

It didn't take more than a few minutes for Nate to get over the fact he was a captive and realize his cell mate was a young man who didn't look like he'd be living to see the end of the week. There wasn't much to work with and Eliot didn't offer a word of thanks, or at all really, but Nate had done what he could, washing out infected wounds and trying to get Eliot to respond.

It took three days, but being stuck in a cell constantly with the same man who just genuinely seemed to want to help you eventually broke through the mental hell Eliot had dropped himself into. It was slow at first, a few quiet conversation, helping Nate help him. They started to tell stories to pass the long hours in the same dark room. Nate was waiting for his insurance company to pay his ransom and get him home. Eliot admitted he was a thief waiting to heal up to test his luck at an escape.

Nate took that admission in stride.

It was either six or seven days after they met that the guards had been in a particularly nasty mood and taken it out on the prisoners. Eliot had been beginning to heal but the fresh beating shoved him back over, a fresh infection set into the newly opened wounds and the beating had raised memories Eliot wasn't ready to deal with. Sometime during the night Eliot had woken from a fever dream turned nightmare to find strong arms holding him tight, like he was protecting Eliot, and soft breaths whispering a prayers and promises in his ear.

When Eliot woke in the morning he was still in Nate's arms, recovering from the fever and infection that had nearly killed him. They started talking about other things after that, about things that mattered. Nate got him to talk about what a boy from Kentucky was doing in this dirt cell so far from home.

Nate admitted he was beginning to think no one was coming for him.

Neither was surprised when Eliot had said it was a good thing he'd learned a lot in captivity and promised Nate he'd get them both out and get Nate back to his family.

It had taken time, and things had gone wrong if the fact Eliot had gotten shot in the escape attempt was any testament, but they made it out. They made it out and parted ways with the agreement they'd owe each other a favor after this. Outside the walls of that cell the line between them was too clear for a friendship to last, they made that statement before they parted ways. They weren't friends.

But they were both good men, and that meant they could and would be civil if they met again.

Eliot opened his eyes and turned to face Nate. "You should remember this one Nate." He said, pulling Nate's hand to cover the scar on his side. "It's part of how we ended up here."

Nate's eyes were watching him, that cool calculating look and yet there was a strange softness when he ran a hand through Eliot's hair.

Eliot was never really sure what went on in Nate's head, he'd changed a lot in nine years and sometimes when Nate drank Eliot wondered how much more he'd change before Eliot didn't recognize him anymore. But then those blue eyes and arms and a breath in his ear and Eliot was reassured.

The years had changed them both, hardened him into something brutal, and made that white knight into a black king, but this relationship brought them back to those days when the world was crueler but they hadn't grown quite so used to it yet. This thing they shared on quiet nights when they washed the years away reminded them both what Nate had told him before they parted ways.

"You are man who learned to how to survive in a world of evil men. You aren't an honest man, but you've managed to stay a good one. That makes you something extraordinary. You are a good man, never forget that."

They were good men in an evil world, and no matter how much Nate drank or the violence Eliot committed or the way the world twisted and broke them when they were together they remembered nothing could change what they were.


	6. Dreaming

**Notes:** New feature! at the start of each chapter I will have the title and a brief description of the following fic!

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**Dreaming**  
_Nate dreams of what could never be, Eliot has nightmares of what should never have been, and they share a idea of a future they might yet have.  
_

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The sun shone so bright, almost too bright, washing out dark places making everything so vivid. Colors were impossibly sharp, the air crisp, the temperature perfect. It had been years since Nate had liked bright days but this was perfect.

"Daddy did you hear? Did dad really race that horse all the way back without a saddle?" Sam asked, pulling Nate's attention down to the little hand holding his own and the boy looking up at him with a smile. Sam turned to look to his other side where Eliot was walking holding his other hand, telling the boy a child friendly version of one of their jobs.

"You boys have fun?" Maggie called from up ahead where she was setting out a picnic lunch, waiting for their return.

Sam ran ahead, hugging his mother and babbling happily about how "dads" were helping him practice for when baseball season started so he could join a team. Eliot started helping serve the food, clearly his own work neatly packaged by Maggie.

Nate stood and watched, afraid to close his eyes or look away. His past, his present, perfectly melded together to form something so perfect he knew that if he blinked it would vanish away. He knew this happy picnic would turn into a cold hospital room and Sam dead in his arms and nothing making sense. This wasn't real. This was a dream.

Sam came over to take his hand, tugging him toward the blanket. "But it's a good dream daddy."

Nate smiled a little and let himself be led, trying to enjoy what he could. "Okay"

He found himself sitting with a bottle of something in his hand, letting the talk move around him. He took a long sip of his beer, content.

"Nate…" Eliot said with an annoyed look a little closer to what Sophie normally gave him. He leaned against Nate, taking a sharp breath and gasping the word out. "Nate!"

Nate's eyes flew open, he was already registering the harsh breathing coming from the man pressed against him in the bed they shared. While Nate had slipped into a dream of what he could only wish for Eliot had fallen into yet another nightmare.

Slowly, carefully, Nate tightened his arms around Eliot and dragged them both into a sitting position, leaning against the headboard of the bed and Eliot leaning against his chest. The younger man was still asleep, caught in a dream that wouldn't let him go until it was finished or danger caused Eliot to come violently awake. Nate knew from a close brush with death the later wasn't to be done lightly.

For the moment there was little Nate could really do besides hold Eliot tight and hope it would be over soon. Eliot lay mostly limp in Nate's arms, head resting back against Nate's shoulder, breath coming in ragged gasps as whichever of the tormentors who had held him in the past returned to continue where they'd left off.

It was nights like tonight Nate saw hints of the Eliot he'd met before a cruel and dangerous world beat the last vestiges of youth out of him. It was a weaker, more vulnerable side of Eliot he'd probably never show anyone who didn't know it existed.

When Eliot experienced these things in real life danger had pressed close and adrenalin and instincts had given him as much protection and control as he needed to survive but he had no safe guard against the memory.

Eliot convulsed, body spasming in response to remembered agony his mind was forcing him to relive. Nate whispered soothingly, wishing there was more he could do than just sit and wait. Eliot was shuddering now, shaking and as close to sobbing as Nate knew Eliot to get then just as suddenly he went still for half a moment.

A long shaky breath escaped Eliot before he spoke, not moving quite yet, the borders between nightmare and reality still undefined. "Nate?"

"Right here." Nate responded, not letting go. "You with me?"

"I think so." Eliot responded. He tensed and forced himself to relax. "Hurts…" The word slipped out on a voice shaking and hurting, an admittance that only Nate would get. "I can still feel it."

Nate traced little circles into the skin beneath his fingers, drawing a different sharp gasp from Eliot. The man would never admit it but Nate had long ago figured out Eliot was ticklish. Eliot twitched away from the offending fingers and though Nate knew it would be awhile before the sensations of his dream left him completely a little distraction would help.

A second later strong hands gripped Nate's fingers, effectively halting the new, less painful, torment, as Eliot looked up at him with a glare mostly lost in the room's darkness.

Nate looked down, smiled, and leaned in to kiss the frown away. Let that sensation replace the others. Eliot responded, turning to half straddle Nate's legs and pin the man against the headboard.

Nate let him have his way, have control over something, glad to see Eliot come away from these dreams more or less himself. There were times when he'd wake up but the dream would hang on and haunt him for hours or even days, darkness and pain clouding Eliot's eyes for even longer.

When they were both out of breath Eliot sank back down onto the bed, surrendering control back to Nate by letting himself be pulled into a embrace. They stared into darkness around them in quiet for a little while, Nate's mind drifting back to his dream.

"I wish you could have known Sam." Nate said quietly, it hurt to think about but it was starting to hurt less, just a little bit, but less. "And that he could of known you. You probably would have been better at teaching him how to hit a baseball. I barely knew myself."

Eliot was quiet, breathing slow and steady and a distant look in his eyes. "I would have liked to." He gave another long breath. "Sometimes I wish…" He shook his head, discarding the thought before he even voiced it.

"What?"

"I'm a hitter, it's not like I'd make the most stable and responsible parent but sometimes…" He shook it off.

"You've thought about having children."

"I'm a con, not a father."

"No one ever said they were mutually exclusive." Nate said, not sure why he was pressing the subject. He hadn't even thought about another child after Sam. He wasn't sure he was ever going to be ready to think about that.

"Well that solves everythin' Lets get to baby makin'." Eliot growled sarcastically, pointing out the obvious issue and sounding annoyed.

Nate rolled his eyes and let the subject drop. It was a dream for other people in other situations.

Still, when he closed his eyes, letting sleep steal over him again he slipped back into dreaming.

He was with Eliot, the day was too bright for the nightmares that clung to the younger man, they were with Maggie and Sam in the park.

A five year old boy with Eliot's blue eyes and dark hair came running over, tagging Sam. The older boy shouted in play annoyance before taking off after his little brother into a spontaneous game of tag their laughter following Nate through dawn and after he'd woken from his dreaming.


	7. Home

**Home  
**_Home has always had a different meaning for Eliot_

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Home.

It had always had a different meaning to Eliot than most people. He'd lost his first home when he was thirteen and the bank had foreclosed his family's house and farm and they'd had to leave the only home he'd known.

When he was seventeen he'd dropped out of school and taken to the road with a stable's road team. He hadn't really had a home since. Eliot had rented apartments, owned condos, stayed in hotel rooms, even slept in cells and prison camp barracks, but it had never really been home. Homes were for people who weren't ready to pick up and leave any moment.

When he joined the team and got an office he flirted with the idea of finding himself a home. He got an apartment, even furnished it more than the bare necessities for survival and comfort. After helping Willy out he even took back a few of the things Willy kept in safe keeping for him to furnish his apartment. It had almost felt right. It had felt like home enough that he'd started to tell the others he was going home at the end of a job instead of simply saying he was going.

After he started this thing with Nate it felt a little more like home. They started staying over at each other's places and spending long nights and it felt good, safe.

It wasn't long though before they realized there were some problems with those arrangements. Eliot only kept beer in his apartment, since he had long ago sworn off anything stronger in the interest of not getting to drunk to fight well. Nate's place didn't have all the knives or other safety measures Eliot kept in areas he frequented to be as prepared as he liked. They couldn't even really fix the problems as easily as they'd like. They worked with thieves who had loose ideas about privacy and both had to be careful not to leave too many traces of themselves in the other's apartment.

It hadn't been too long after they realized this thing didn't look to be over anytime soon that they reached a logical conclusion.

They started looking for an apartment they could share. They'd both keep their own, both to keep up appearances and since they both valued their space. It wasn't like money was a problem anyway.

The apartment they ended up renting was small and ambiguous, perfect for laying low. With one decent sized bedroom, a bathroom, decent sized kitchen and a big main room they had all the space they really needed. Furnishings were simple enough, with little flairs of splurges for top grade kitchen utilities, a TV set that Hardison would of approved of, a pool table, and the best security system on the market. They set up a system that would let either of them know when the other entered or left the apartment.

At first Eliot wasn't as sure about the new arrangements as he thought he would be. It made all sorts of sense but he just… he hadn't **lived** with anyone since he was a kid.

It wasn't until the end of the first job they had after getting the apartment, when Eliot left the offices with a call of "Headin' home" over his shoulder, and ended up walking through the door of the apartment to find Nate already waiting for him that it started to fall into place.

It was a few hours later, when he was drifting to sleep in Nate's arms, Eliot first really admitted to himself that truth. His definition of home was different than most, it wasn't a house or a place or a town. People said home was where the heart was.

His home was wherever he and Nate were together.


	8. In the Arms Of

**Notes**: Actually the next story in this series was Knights and Kings but I already have that posted up. Look it up if you're interested.

**Notes:** This uses "Angel" By Sarah Mchardtospellname. It's pretty.

* * *

**In the Arms Of  
**_In the arms of the angel, fly away from here. From this dark cold hotel room and the endlessness that you fear..._

* * *

_Spend all your time waiting_  
_for that second chance_  
_For the break that would make it okay_  
_There's always some reason to feel not good enough_  
_And it's hard at the end of the day_  
_I need some distraction, oh beautiful release_  
_Memory seeps from my veins_  
_Let me be empty, oh and weightless and Maybe_  
_I'll find some peace tonight_

_Close the door. Put down your stuff. Find a chair. Breathe. Just breathe. Just breathe._

_Just breathe._

_Don't think. Just breathe. Take a breath, go through the motions a little longer._

_Don't think about the kids killed by the company we're taking down. Don't think about the parents describing their son's last moments alive as cancer killed him. Don't think about Sam. Don't think about Sam. Just breathe._

Nate looked owlishly around the empty hotel room blinking, breathing, trying not to think. It wasn't working. He'd been doing marginally better. Between revenge and Eliot and finally telling Maggie things were getting close to being almost okay. He wasn't just surviving he was actually living, sometimes for stretches that lasted hours at a time.

But then he ended up back here. On a job. In an empty hotel room because as much as Eliot hated doing this to him Eliot had long ago explained to Nate that he couldn't risk any kind of distraction on a job, the thing between them included.

And every day longer it took them to take this company down there could be another kid getting exposed, getting cancer.

Another family destroyed because his plan took seven days instead of six.

Maybe if he spent some time he could shave off an extra day.

He went back to work but minutes ticked away into hours and his planning turned into remembering Sam and then it turned into him raiding the mini bar for whatever liquor they had there.

_Don't think, just breathe._ He couldn't tell if it was Eliot's voice telling him or his voice telling Eliot anymore. It seemed so much of their interactions had some kind of pain involved with "just breathe" being the best advice. For just a brief moment he put down the bottle and closed his eyes. He'd just breathe. He'd breathe and try to think of Eliot instead of Sam.

_Just breathe_.

He'd said that to Sam.

Another drink toward oblivion. He just needed a little bit more and maybe he could breathe out everything and sail away empty, find a little peace and just.

He raised the bottle to his lips to take another drink when a calloused and scared hand wrapped around his to stop him.

Nate turned unsteadily, seeing Eliot there but not understanding right away. "Eliot." Was as articulate as he managed to get.

"Nate." Eliot replied, his voice even but eyes concerned. Somewhat gently he tugged the bottle from Nate's hand and put it out of reach. "Come'on" Eliot muttered, pulling Nate to his feet. "Time for bed. Need ya on your game tomorrow."

"Why're ya here?" Nate finally managed to slur out, wincing at how confrontational it sounded.

"Turns out you're more of a distraction when I don't have you in sight." Eliot said all but carrying Nate toward the bedroom. "It's easier ta just make sure your okay myself." Nate didn't even know how to answer that. "You're a pain in the ass Ford." Nate would of believed it bothered Eliot more if he hadn't been smiling when he said it.

"''pologies." Was all he could say. He was still praying this all wasn't some hallucination. "This mean your gonna stay?" He couldn't figure out how to say what he meant, was he going to stop distancing himself on jobs, but he hopped Eliot understood.

"I guess we'll just have ta see. If I don't get myself killed tomorrow maybe." He sat Nate down on the bed and helped him out of his shirt before pulling the covers down and getting him under them.

Nate closed his eyes as Eliot's weight disappeared from the side of the bed, leaving him along. His drunk mind unable to hold back bleak thoughts as another long lonely night settled in. A second later the weight returned, Eliot slipping under the covers. As a bare chest and arms wrapped around his torso Nate registered that Eliot must have been changing out of his work clothes into the sweats he wore to bed.

It felt a little weird for a few moments, he normally slept holding Eliot not the other way around, but it wasn't bad. Eliot holding him tight was a little like a grounding force, keeping everything at bay. Here he could just breathe and not think about anything beyond the steady breathing of the hitter protecting him from himself.

"Don't think" Eliot whispered in his ear. "Just breathe.

_So tired of the straight lines and everywhere you turn_  
_There's vultures and theives at your back_  
_Storm keeps on twistin' keep on buildin' the lies_  
_That you make up for all that you lack_  
_Don't make no difference, escape one last time_  
_It's easier just to believe _  
_In this sweet madness, oh this glorious sadness_  
_That brings me to my knees._

_Close the door. Put down your shit. Sit down. Breathe. Just breathe. _

_Just fucking breathe._

_Don't think. Don't relax. Don't let go._

_Just fucking breathe._

Eliot was breathing, but that wasn't the issue.

He was shaking all over, his entire body rigid and tense like he was about to explode into motion of some kind and he couldn't figure out what. He was so close to losing it and just letting go. But he couldn't. He was working with a team now and if he let go… he couldn't afford a slip up. The best he could hope for if he did was that the team would be afraid of him.

The worst case scenario didn't bare thinking about.

He had to stay calm, stay controlled, on the straight and narrow.

Even on nights like tonight when he was so close to lashing out all he could do was turn that violence inward. He knew it was all in his head but it felt like he was tearing himself apart.

He wanted to rip those fucking bastards to shreds so badly he'd barely been able to breathe. Nate had been right to tell him to get gone, but that was two hours ago and he still couldn't think straight.

Nate was gonna blame himself for this one. He'd say he should of known this would brush too close to home. A guy preying on teenagers desperate for money was bad as far as anyone was concerned. But this sick fuck was setting up arena fights, doping the kids up with steroid enough to make them half crazy and sicking them on each other and weak newbies for entertainment. Eliot had only seen half a fight but it had been enough to make him want to hurt somebody.

That had been before the kid they were trying to save, some boy named Thomas who was desperate to get enough money to help save his parent's ranch, had been killed in a fight, his brains splattered across the area wall by some kid too hyped up on steroids to know who the hell he even was. That look in his eyes as he staggered back from the body had been so like what Eliot used to feel like after a fight…

"Fuck!" Eliot cried out, clutching the fist he'd just put through a wall to his chest. He didn't even remember standing. He turned back, seeing a path of destruction wrecked across the hotel room. He was losing it.

"Just breathe" He told himself, his breath shaky as he tried to regather himself. But it was too late. He was just grasping at smoke.

He was alone now. He could just let go and then regather and maybe he'd be alright. In the morning he'd just pretend it never happened.

He didn't even feel the pain when his other fist made a matching hole in the wall.

Like a switch had been flicked he just let go. Anger, frustration, rage, tension, anxiety, and everything else flatlinned out and turned into motion that led to destruction. Another hole in the wall, another broken table top, a broken lamp, a smashed chair. His mind reached the hazy comfortable white noise where nothing mattered, nothing was real, he felt nothing and everything blurred away.

He found himself in the middle of the wreckage gasping for breath and still no closer to being okay. Chairs and lamps weren't a decent replacement for what he actually wanted to do and hurt. He didn't feel better like he thought he would. He just had hurting hands and that same rage and violence rolling through him like madness.

And he'd still lost control.

He let himself fall forward, resting on his hands and knees as gasps for breath turned into stifled sobs and a desperate attempt to pull the shattered bits back together before someone saw him like this.

Fingers, feather light to let him know they were there, touched his shoulder before arms were pulling him back into an embrace, holding him tight and together. "It's okay. Don't think. Just breathe." Nate whispered in his ear.

Eliot pulled away, fear spiking through him. He didn't want Nate to be around him right now. He was dangerous. He didn't want to hurt Nate. He couldn't live with the idea he'd hurt Nate.

"Breathe Eliot. I've got you."

"Don't want to hurt you."

"You won't." Nate assured, holding him tighter. "Just relax."

Eliot closed his eyes, his entire body hurt and he still felt like he was tearing himself apart but somehow it was becoming a little easier. Just a little bit by bit that violence was draining away and Nate was still there, still with him, still giving him something real to hold onto.

Eliot didn't know how much time had passed before Nate pulled him to his feet and took him into the mostly undamaged bedroom. He sat there in silence while Nate wrapped up his bruised and broken knuckles and helped him change out of his job clothes. Neither said a word as Nate settled Eliot into bed and climbed in next to him, holding the hitter close, and tight, and together.

For the first time since they took this job Eliot felt safe enough to just relax, close his eyes, and let go.

Nate would keep watch over him until morning.

_In the arms of the angel_  
_Fly away from here_  
_From this dark, cold, hotel room_  
_And the endlessness that you fear_  
_You are pulled from the wreckage_  
_Of this silent reverie_  
_You're in the arms of the angel_  
_May you find some comfort here_


	9. NonDates and Kick Ass Fairy Boys

**Notes:** Still flipping out over The Tap-Out Job. It was awsome and I feel like my little verse with Eliot is weirdly brushing close to cannon (I mean seriously, the scene where he "snaps" is exactly what I've always imagined him going Black Knight is like). So um yeah... now for somthing totally different.  
**Note: **Gold stars for whoever makes up a good punchline for the summary line.

* * *

**Concerning Non-Dates, Unattended Gay-Bars, and Kick Ass Fairy Boys  
**_An ex-insurance investigator and his retrival specalist boyfriend walk into a bar..._

* * *

So maybe it wasn't a good idea to just drop into some random bar.

Sure he had Eliot with him, which meant unless the bar just happened to be a meeting place for the Mexican drug cartel it wasn't like there was any threat to their persons. Maybe it was that Eliot was actually looking for a fight, you could never really tell with Eliot on a Friday night.

If it was they might have to have a talk about looking for a fight when on a date.

Okay, so it wasn't really a date as far as dates go. A spur of the moment decision to go out to a bar instead of spending yet another night in their apartment hardly counted as dateworthy. When two people were living together deciding to go somewhere together wasn't exactly date qualifications.

And if Nate was trying to distance himself from a concept he associated with bad chick flicks and awkward college days then hopefully Eliot had the sense not to call this a date either.

So a not date to a bar had been prefaced by a not quite spoken agreement to keep the whole date behavior to a minimum. They'd drunk beers, played pool, and managed not to let the subtext of their conversation get way out of hand. Heck, they'd both had an amusing time fielding the responses of girls who didn't put two and two together.

But they were drinking, which meant as the night wore on the non date behavior was slowly migrating toward "we're living together in the friendly touchy sense" behavior. Which was around the time it occurred to Nate that they probably would have been better off biting the bullet and going to a gay bar.

It wasn't really that much of a shock to either of them when some biker guy who looked like he thought himself quite tough tried to take the table they were playing pool at. The verbal vomit of slurs didn't exactly rile either of them more than to cause Nate to ask Eliot. "Do you feel like you're back in Junior High all of a sudden?"

"It's middle school these days Nate." Eliot answered off hand, eyes never leaving the guy but still pointedly unriled. "But I get ya point. The usual names." He paused raising an eyebrow at the guy almost appraisingly. "The denial."

A couple of the guys friends wandered over, renewing the bikers confidence now that they outnumbered Eliot and Nate. A couple of lewd comments were met with shrugs and Eliot taking his shot. It almost surprised Nate to see Eliot taking it without even getting a little pissed, until he saw the smirk on the man's face.

So it seemed Nate wasn't the only one who realized not responding was the most infuriating course of action. Of course knowing Eliot he was just waiting for one to take a swing.

"Did you choose this bar on purpose Eliot?" Nate asked, ignoring the men crowding further into their space.

Eliot turned, giving his little grin. "Now why'd ya ask that?" Damn Eliot and that damn grin of his short-circuiting his brain every damn time.

Nate missed the comment that caused Eliot's demeanor to change. His voice took on an almost friendly tone, putting down his pool cue and shaking his head. "Ah now see fellas, that's not really a good idea you've got there." He cracked his knuckles. "You keep callin' me a fairy and I'm gonna make sure when they roll ya inta ER later that they put down you had your ass kicked by a Fairy Boy." The easy going air of a night with Nate disappeared. It took a half second for Nate to determine it was a blow off some steam and get in some blows thing not a lost his cool duck and cover thing.

Eliot had the first one down before any of them could react.

Nate knew he could step in. He could help Eliot take on the three guys who were trying to rescue their buddy from a sound beating.

But Eliot looked like he was having a good time so Nate got another round of beers and paid their tab instead. He didn't worry about the ruckus Eliot was causing. Places like this had a policy that the fight looser paid the tab.

By the time Nate returned with their drinks Eliot was watching the last of the four limp away with a almost frightening smile.

"My hero." Nate commented dryly, handing Eliot his beer.

Eliot just smiled again, grabbed Nate's collar and pulled him in for a kiss.

Wasn't like anyone else was going to be bothering them now.

By the time they'd got home and only just made it into the bedroom Nate was beginning to think a bar wasn't such a bad place for a non-date after all.

* * *


	10. Feedback

**Notes:** This is actually a tag to the First David Job and if anyone was wondering if I'd just messed up and accidentally skipped number 10, this is why. I'm not entierly certain why I didn't post it until now (since it's actually one of the earlier stories posted on Lj) but I figured, in honor of tonights episode, I'd post two chapters in the same day.

* * *

**Feedback  
**_What would Eliot have done?_

* * *

They don't have time to plan, they don't have time to even sneeze all things considered. Sterling's already five moves ahead of them and every second gives him another moment to think of some preparation against a plan they might come up with. He's already ready for anything Nate or Sophie would come up with and was probably calling in backup just incase Eliot wasn't as out of commission as he should be.

They don't have time to be picky. They need to get in, take out the guards covering Hardison, and get out **before** Sterling's reinforcements get here.

Nate hates the thought as it crosses his mind, he won't, he can't ask Eliot that.

But they don't have time.

Nate messes with his phone as Sophie leaves to do a Parker, trying to buy himself a few more seconds to think of how to do a Hardison. Right now all he can think of is that Eliot could still do an Eliot better than he normally could. If the tone in Eliot's voice when he told them they'd been blown was any indication he was already halfway there.

Nate turns around, finding Eliot had arrived already. His face was grimmest and distant and Nate could practically feel that violence in him all but overriding the man shaped packaging that normally controlled it. All Nate had to do was give Eliot the go ahead and Nate knew that he'd be unleashing a force on the guards holding Hardison that a bullet wouldn't slow down.

Nate knew from experience. The one time before Nate had seen Eliot let go like that a guard had shot him. It had been shooting peas at a raging grizzly bear.

The problem was Nate knew it would freak out Hardison and Nate was pretty sure the only way to survive Eliot in that state was to play dead and Nate had no way of letting Hardison know that.

That wasn't even touching what doing that to himself would cost Eliot. He'd told Nate once that each time he slipped over, let his mind white out and the black knight run rampant it was harder to come back. One day he might not come back at all.

"We have ta move Nate." Eliot more grunted than said. He was sweating, eyes not focusing and his breathing was labored and Nate could only imagine what kind of state anyone else on the team would be in in his shoes. "Give me the go ahead. Let me do my job."

"Eliot wait just… we have to"

"We've got no time Nate. Let me do this." Eliot was more growling than speaking now, rage Nate wasn't used to seeing radiating from the man. Eliot had a lot of anger in him but this was different, more so than Nate would even think would come from Eliot.

"Hardison…" Nate started.

"I'll tell him ta get down and stay." Nate opened his mouth again but Eliot shook his head. "It'll be alright Nate. Just let me do this."

"I let you go you'll probably kill them. These aren't mobsters, just guys doing their job."

"They hurt him Nate." Eliot growled. "He was out cold when they took his com."

The words took Nate by surprise. He'd expected any number of reasons Eliot was this pissed off, but that? He hadn't realized just how protective of the rest of the team Eliot had become until now. "Eliot."

Eliot shook his head, interrupting whatever else Nate would say and pulling out his com. "Put yours in once I'm inside. When it's done I'll tell ya." Eliot went to put his com in but winced pulling it out.

"What?"

"Feedback."

Suddenly Nate started thinking like Hardison.


	11. White Queen

**Note:** This is a tag to the Second David Job and takes place during the planning stages after Maggie is brought in.

* * *

**White Queen**  
_She was Nate's ex-wife. He's sleeping with Nate. She knows._

* * *

Maggie had a way of making things between him and Nate awkward.

Of course, all things considered, Nate was Maggie's ex-husband and Eliot was now sleeping and more or less living with Nate so it made a good deal of sense that her being around would make things uncomfortable. Even if Nate and Eliot alone knew the real reason why having Nate, Eliot, and Maggie alone in the same room was a bad idea it didn't make the knowledge in Eliot's head easier.

And it wasn't as if this whole shindig had started out promising. He should have known since the beginning, when he was working a job and acting the part and flirting because that was what he did and Nate had learned to deal so long as Eliot only looked but didn't touch, and he picked up a pretty blonde chick who just so happened to be Nate's ex-wife.

The team thought it threw a monkey wrench into the works of the job? They should of seen the job it pulled on his and Nate's relationship. It hadn't exactly been on the most stable ground already. Eliot's past and alcoholics did not exactly agree with one another in any comfortable terms and Nate was just getting worse.

But god did that leave them screwed up.

And it's not like they had any time to fix things before they had to scatter.

Then again not seeing each other for three fucking ***long*** months may have helped get over the whole incident. Distance makes the heart grow fonder.

Not to even mention what it did to your sex drive once you actually saw each other again.

Then they didn't even have time to do Anything about it before it was back to the job and the story and frikken Maggie. Back to make things confusing. So here Eliot was, in some remote corner of Hardison's house with that banged up magnetic chess set he'd carried through the years planning out his strategy for the rest of the game he and Nate had started during a brief lull earlier trying to just think about chess and not Nate.

Which was probably a stupid thing to be doing since Nate had taught him **how** to play chess and he was just beginning to think that maybe he should give up and go find something to beat the snot out of when he heard the object of his frustration behind him.

"I thought your voice sounded familiar." Maggie said from the door of the room and Eliot turned to look toward her. "You were the man on the phone, the one asking if Nate was alright?"

It took Eliot a moment but he remembered, the one time he'd risked a call to Nate's home in the nine years between when they'd met and Chicago. "I was worried. He was a month late getting back to me." Maggie raised an eyebrow in question and Eliot shrugged, trying to play cool but 'I'm sleeping with your ex-husband' just kept running through his mind. Eliot tapped the board beside him. "We met on a job ten years ago. Nate taught me to play chess. We'd play chess by mail. I was waiting for his next move."

Maggie's eyes lingered on the chess set. "That was you?" She shifted her eyes back to Eliot. "You were the boy in the Cairo prison?" She asked, her voice softening and Eliot flinched a little mentally wondering how much about him and what had happened Nate had told Maggie.

"It was a long time ago." Eliot answered moving a piece absently, not liking the scrutiny.

"You know he thought of you like a son by the end of that." Maggie said, walking into the room and sitting close to Eliot. "Talked about you a lot after getting home. I think he even missed you for awhile."

Eliot grinned sadly, he'd never admit it but he'd missed Nate for awhile too… maybe even missed him like a father, especially considering where fate had taken Eliot next. "Sharing a cell 24-7 can make you used to having someone around I guess." He admitted, hoping this conversation stayed in the relative safety of the somewhat distant past.

"Now you two share a bed." Maggie said so casually Eliot thought he'd misheard at first. His surprise must have shown. "You two do a good job at hiding it but I was married to him Eliot. Though I'm surprised Sophie at the very least hasn't noticed."

Eliot opened and closed his mouth, a couple of times, not entirely sure what sound he was trying to make. Finally he settled on. "It's been only three months." He said looking back to the chess set. "Nothin' happened back in Cairo. It took ten years to get us this far." He was already preparing to deal with a woman scorned, he'd try at least to keep her from thinking Nate had cheated on her with him.

"I know." She said, crossing to sit on the other side of the chess board from him. She was quiet as she looked at the board for a long moment then moved a piece. "He always said you could learn a lot about a person by playing chess with them." Her hand hovered over the pieces that had been removed from the board. "Do you mind?"

It took a second for Eliot to catch her drift but then he nodded, resetting the board for a fresh game. Funny, he wasn't surprised to learn she played chess as well as Nate.

They were seven or eight moves in before either said anything. "Do you love him?" Maggie asked finally, her voice soft.

"Enough that I'm still trying to make this work." He said, before wincing. He was talking about everything, neither of them were the poster boys for mentally stable, but she might take it to mean the alcohol. The alcohol which drove her to divorce him. She didn't say anything and he moved a piece. "I don't mean it like that either." He finished, or tried, his mouth opening again. "neither of us… I ain't much better truth be told. 'cept I've been keepin' my demons at bay for twenty years. Bit better at it is all."

He finally looked up, seeing her staring at him, her face set without expression but her eyes soft. She met his eyes for a second and looked down, making to look for her next move but seeming distracted. "He told me about your step-father, what he did to you. He didn't mean to but sometimes he'd have nightmares, remembering what they did to you in that dungeon and his mind would twist it into other things and he told me in the end. He was afraid of becoming that for…" Her voice faltered before she said Sam..

Eliot didn't really know how to react to that, how to respond to the pity in her voice or how much she knew. He'd moved a long way from there, from that battered teen and broken twenty something. The two years after Cairo he'd spent in Croatia had shown him horrors even his hell of a life hadn't known and he'd come out on the other side hard but strong. He'd faced hell and walked out alive and able to live with the ghosts that followed him out.

And he wasn't even going to touch what that knowledge had done to Nate. It wasn't something for now.

"It's been a long time since then. Things changed. We both changed. He's not the man you married, or the man that saved me in Cairo." He looked down at the chess board, touching his white knight. "But who he is and who he was keep's this team together… 'n me together. And we keep him together."

Maggie moved a piece, he moved a piece, and the game continued in silence for a time. Then Maggie took his knight and held it in her hand. "White knight or black king." She mused. "I heard the old terms. Nate was a white knight, now he's a black king and you're his white knight and I don't have a place on this chessboard anymore do I?"

"Don't know ma'am. You still have your black queen 'n I have my white. Sophie's caused a mess, we'll take her back… she's one of us… but maybe a white queen to balance her black wouldn't be too bad." He didn't know why he was doing this, when had it become his right to offer her a place? When had he decided he wanted to? "We're a bunch of misfit pieces anyway."

She nodded and went to move when Hardison knocked on the door and came in. "Hey you'll, we're gatherin'." They got up and followed him out. Hardison asked. "What were you two talking about anyway?"

They glanced at each other. There was a certain amount of understanding, not friendship, not yet, but something bordering trust or something generally positive at least. Eliot shrugged, Maggie smiled and they answered in unison. "Chess."


	12. Queen's Gambit

**Notes:** The first in the "Trust and Sobriety" arc, a series of tags for the Beantown Bailout Job I'm doing to better fix my verse to follow cannon as closely as possible. (though after last nights show I am strangly closer to cannon than I ever imagined I would be)

* * *

**Queen's Gambit  
**_Nate could recognize a Queens Gambit opener, even if the situation had nothing to do with chess._

* * *

They parted on good terms. That was something at least.

Okay, that was crap.

They parted on pretend good terms, both too stubborn to say what really needed to be said. To say they didn't want this to be the end, that this was the best thing either of them had going. Like the team as a whole they were still insisting they didn't need each other and so they let it end.

They parted on "good terms" because they decided it would be easier to just walk away.

After all, they hadn't said the three little words that would of made it hard, right? That was the whole point wasn't it?

So Eliot told Nate he was off to DC and then out of the country and if he wanted to start another chess by mail game his old landlord was still taking his mail for him.

And Nate had told Eliot he was thinking he'd go to Boston and if he ever was passing through look him up and they'll have a drink or something.

And they didn't say goodbye, even before the tarmac, even as they turned to walk away from each other. Because that was how they worked. Fate threw them together every five years or so and they'd take it as long as it lasted then part ways until fate or life or whatever threw them together again.

And for a few days it almost felt good. It almost didn't hurt.

Then Nate started sobering up.

He'd thought quitting drinking would be hard. He never realized quitting drinking without the job, the team, and Eliot to distract him… He thought quitting alone might be tough but he'd decided to do it.

There were just some nights he wished his cure all for missing people wasn't the very activity he was trying to give up.

In those days (weeks? Months? Short lifetimes?) loneliness, missing Eliot, grief over Sam and his divorce, mild dread for the others out there getting themselves killed (since when did he care so much and since when was it his job to keep them from getting into trouble?), they all battled with withdrawal to cause him the most misery.

But eventually, bit by bit, it got just a little easier. Moment by moment his head started to clear and his hands stopped shaking. He started to dream of things other than Sam dead, Eliot bloody and screaming at the hands of some Russian interrogator. He stopped catching himself watching the news, half expecting to see Parker smashed dead on the sidewalk from a failed harness, Hardison caught and sent to try (and fail) to survive in prison, and Sophie shot dead somewhere.

Eventually he was almost happy, maybe even more than almost.

He should have guessed that it wouldn't be more than a week after he actually started to feel decent for periods lasting for stretches of several hours at a time that the others found their way back into his life.

Somehow he'd known, from the moment he'd looked through his mail and found the invitation to the musical, he'd known that it wasn't just one night he was signing up for.

If he showed up… It seemed Sophie was the first of them to break, to try to pull them all back together. She'd put aside the pride that came with refusing to admit she needed them and now she was running a gambit to reform the team she'd been instrumental in pulling apart. Fitting, or ironic, but their black queen was coming full circle.

A small, dry grin had spread across Nate's lips at that. The Queen's Gambit. It was a daring opening move for a chess match that had drastic implications for the rest of the game weather it was "accepted" or "declined".

In the back of his head he could almost hear Eliot complaining about how everything always ended up a chess metaphor when Nate was involved.

So Nate found himself looking "down" at the metaphorical chess match this was likely to turn into. If he declined this gambit, this invitation, and kept to his life as he knew it now he would remain in control. There was some chance they'd still come looking for him but he would have made his intentions clear and they probably would leave him be in the end.

Or he could accept it, and the inevitable, and allow himself to be drawn back into this new old life.

Maybe even restart the games with Eliot.

Maybe this time they'd not feel the need to operate under the assumption it wouldn't last.

But that meant there was the risk that it wouldn't last.

When they'd first started that thing between them one of Eliot's main hesitations had always been that he knew, even without Nate saying, how close Nate was to losing it. There had always been that concern that if something happened it might drive Nate to blow his brains out and have done with it and Eliot, even with what he'd spent his life doing, wasn't comfortable with the idea he could be the reason Nate killed himself.

If Nate was honest with himself there had been times these past couple months he'd been tempted to end it.

He wasn't sure if he could do this again. He already felt like he was running on borrowed time.

"Queens gambit declined" Nate said, dropping the invitation into the garbage.

Two days later he'd find himself absently wishing for Hardison and Eliot so he could send someone else to go digging through the trash to find the invitation to get the information he needed.

They'd parted on good terms, he had a new life that would become "good" any day now, and all of that might just go to hell if he went to this show.

Eliot would say it was very catholic of him, but somehow Nate couldn't quite seem to make the smart decision.

Sophie had made her gambit and he'd make one of his own. He'd go to the show and see what happened. If nothing else his reluctance would help him keep control over the board.

Or at least as long as possible with these pieces involved.


	13. Trusting Sobriety

**Notes: **Part two of my Trust and Sobriety arc and a tag to Beantown Bailout.

* * *

**Trusting Sobriety  
**_He could handle drunk Nate, knew to keep and eye on tipsy Nate, and took care of Hung over Nate.  
It only took in ten minutes to realise he didn't trust Sober Nate. _

* * *

Eliot couldn't honestly say he was surprised to see the others. He'd gone to the show with the expectation of seeing them there and that they'd likely end up together and working together and getting Nate to help them not maim eachother in the process of working together.

He would be the last of them to admit it but he went to the show not to add to the list of nights he'd really like to forget but with the desired outcome being a reunion and refounding of Leverage Consulting.

He wouldn't have admitted it, even to himself, but he missed the team, missed Nate, missed having to think in concepts of "us" and "we" and having someone to watch his back. Hell, he even missed that sort of sense of clarity he'd get on the job when the rest of the team was in danger and he was doing his job by protecting them from it.

The whole life had gotten under his skin and he just wanted it out so he could walk away and be done with it almost as much as he wanted to be right back to the way things had been.

It wasn't like he hadn't tried to move on. He'd done big jobs and found himself thinking how much easier they would have been with the team. He'd gone to Pakistan only to find the desert and heat made him think of Cairo and the little cell not to far outside of the city where he'd first met and gotten to know Nate.

He'd come back to LA, ready to come home only to realize there was no "back" to come home to.

Then there had been that excuse to go to his sisters and stay there for awhile despite the risks of his life and hers colliding that made him keep her at arms length. With the hustle and bustle of life in her house with her husband and two kids and everyday life (and the reason he was there in the first place) he came as close to forgetting the team as he'd come.

Then her kids had asked for a bedtime story and he ended up telling them about Robin

Hood and his merry men only Robin ended up being too much like Nate and Sophie was Maid Marian and Will Scarlet was Eliot himself. When he started telling a tale of how Robin Hood helped a horse trainer steal back his last surviving horse through a con involving Chinese thoroughbreds even little Marie, his niece all of eight years old, realized he wasn't talking about Robin Hood anymore.

Later he'd tell his sister about what he'd been doing all these months, faltering only a little before telling her about Nate and how their relationship had happened.

She'd only hit him for being an idiot twice, a new record for their conversations in recent years, and mostly playfully.

The first was for thinking she'd care about the gender of whoever it was that made him smile like that.

The second was for being so stubborn he lost the first good thing she'd seen him have.

When she told him he better hold on tight when they came back together again he didn't argue or ask how she knew that they would.

He'd been alarmingly glad to see the others, though judging by the look on Hardison's face he'd either managed to cover it well or the mental grimace at being so happy to see them had translated into a growl.

He hadn't been prepared to catch sight of Nate.

Over the years Eliot had perfected the art of being alone. Part of that, a large part of that, was simply not thinking about people who being without made you feel lonely. If you only thought about the people you were really glad were miles away you could be perfectly happy to have all the alone time you could possibly want.

Over the last six months he'd been reminded of the team again and again but Nate, and all the confusion and emotions he wasn't the kind of guy who dealt with very well, had been the main threat to him being happy about being alone. He'd gotten to the point where he had managed to barely even think about Nate at all, at least not think about ***that*** bit.

It came rushing back like a punch to the gut and it was about as hard to keep functioning as if he hadn't taken a blow.

He wished he could have said they slid back as if no time had passed. Afterall wasn't that how they always seemed to work in the past?

It really wasn't though. They'd never been good at picking up where they left off. There were always bumps and missteps as Nate remembered first that Eliot was a thief and took a little longer to remember he was more than just a thief. And there were problems aplenty as Eliot tried to remind his instincts that he did trust at least one person and that Nate was that person and any sudden movments by Nate probably weren't actually threats to life and limb.

But they managed to get along as well as the rest of the team seemed to be.

And Nate said his name when they all came together, which wasn't much in the grand scheme of things but they had always worked in little gestures so maybe just maybe it was a sign that something was still there.

Then after the show Nate had sought him out. Of all the four of them Nate had told him first that he'd quit drinking.

Eliot just wished he could have believed him as easily.

Eliot had trusted Nate more than almost anyone else for a decade. Nate was the reason he was alive in more ways than just patching up his injuries when they met back in Cairo and he was probably the reason he'd survived this long sanity in tact.

As a mentor, a friend, a leader, a lover … Eliot had trusted and followed Nate's lead as he played each role in turn.

It wasn't until he found himself questioning Nate about quitting drinking that he realized that trust that had been the rule of their relationship since the long days in Cairo had one flaw.

He'd never trusted Nate as a drunk.

And even as Nate told him he'd stopped drinking and Eliot questioned him, noting the surprise in Nate's expression at Eliot's distrust, he realized it would be a long time before he completely trusted this new sobriety.

But he pushed past that, ready to embrace this new Nate (even if he didn't trust it yet), ready to jump back on the bike of crime, ready to do something besides practice the fine art of being alone.

He wasn't prepared for the rebuke.

He'd known it wouldn't be easy to convince Nate to come back, to rejoin them. After all, it took Nate awhile to remember he (and the others) weren't just thieves.

He hadn't realized, hadn't been prepared to be shut down like that. After everything that had happened, after the conversation and signs of interest and everything that had come before…

You would of thought a man so skilled in reading and manipulating people would be able to give some kind of subtext that he was still interested, that he gave half a care. Instead he made a comment about how he'd been drunk half the time, brushed it all off.

Brushed him off.

And just fucking left.

Six months ago Eliot could have reasoned with it, picked apart Nate's behavior. He'd learned how to interpret Drunk Nate, and Hung Over Nate, and Lost in His Head Nate, and mercifully the good Nate's that came out in between.

But sober Nate? He wasn't sure he trusted this one. He didn't know this Nate.

This Nate was honest, and trying to keep to the life he knew. A good life with no room for thieves.

And no need for Eliot.

And as Eliot blundered on in the conversation, asking about whatever they hadn't told him without really caring, he had to wonder, that paranoia that kept him alive and guessing coming back with a vengeance.

If now Nate had no need for Eliot… He'd said it himself Nate was a master manipulator.

Had all of this been Nate getting what he needed?


	14. Rule 17

**Notes: **Third in the Trust and Sobriety arc (tags to Beantown Bailout). To readers who've been following this for awhile you soon might notice a change in the chapter index thing. The stories I've written are mostly one-shots, short arcs, or drabbles but they do take place in a somewhat specific chronological order that occasionally varies from the order which I wrote and posted them. It will vary a good deal more soon when I start The Two Knights Opener arc which deals with the first few episodes. In the interest of giving an easier time reading through these in Order soon the Chapter index thing will be numbered acording to their chronological order. So if it jumps from 19 to 7 to 24 don't worry, theirs nothing wrong with your eyesight. Feel free to ignore it if you wish. Eventually I plan on moving the chapters around so they are in order and simply adding the new chapters to the end and mocing them to their correct location after I add the next chapter after that. Anyway, just a heads up.

* * *

**Rule 17  
**_Rule 17: Say the things you mean to say, you might not get a chance later. Just don't say That Thing.  
Well at least they've got that last part down._

* * *

They'd never really been good at saying what they meant. They had a rule about it but they still didn't manage to obey it with anything bordering regularity.

It did however mean they'd gotten pretty good at learning what the other meant when they said something else.

So when Eliot asked if Nate wanted them to leave Nate caught the uncertainty Eliot didn't actually voice, maybe even uncertainty Eliot hadn't wanted him to catch. He knew Eliot was talking about much more than just the job and the team. He knew Eliot wasn't sure if Nate wanted what they'd had before.

When he answered, saying yes, he wanted them to leave, but looking to the others in the room, Eliot knew Nate meant that there were three too many people in the room to get into this.

But at least it wasn't actually telling him to go away.

And later, when the job was taking off (whether or not Nate wanted it to) and Eliot explained Parker's outfit he knew Nate would understand that he was testing the waters. He'd always watched Nate's back, always been the one providing whatever was needed to keep things running smoothly. He was letting Nate know he was still willing to act that part, whether or not there was something going between them.

Later Nate would hate that he'd rebuffed that sign, still to stubborn to admit he still needed the help.

It would take a little while but Nate would eventually give Eliot the sign they'd both been waiting for.

It was a simple phrase, made off hand as much to Sophie as to Eliot but they'd always acted in little ways. It was all the sign he really needed.

"You want to do this thing, you're on your own. Understood?"

So Eliot stayed.


	15. What Hardison Knows

**Notes**: Fourth in my Trust and Sobriety arc (Three more to go).|

* * *

**What Hardison Knows  
**_Hardison likes to think he knows the most about the team, though not all of it comes from being a hacker.  
_

_

* * *

_

Hardison likes that he knows more about the team than anyone else on the team (except maybe Nate but that doesn't count).

For example, he knows that Jenny is in fact not actually Sophie's real name. He figured out how to track her activities back almost twenty years by using her acting resume (which she actually never falsifies), tracking the city and doing mixed database searches with surrounding cities.

Her earliest activity he has record of is in 1990 when she conned a French Nobleman while playing a role in a local production of My Fair Lady. But she told Hardison, when he asked, that her first role was a bit part in Taming of the Shrew and he hasn't given up on finding that yet.

He knows Parker has been connected with the mysterious deaths of at least two of her foster parents that were under investigation for abuse.

He also knows her real name, though he knows better than to ever call her by it.

But really Hardison knows the most about Nate and Eliot.

As an honest man Nate was almost boringly easy to track. Over the time they've worked together Harrdison traced nearly every paper trail an honest life leaves. Someday Hardison is going to write a book about making an honest man based on what he found.

Though he'll add an entire chapter about not killing his kid.

Most of what Hardison knows about Eliot he wishes he didn't.

He knows the name of this Eliot Spencer first appeared as a sixteen-year-old street urchin on the streets of the bad part of L.A. who was hospitalized after being shot when he was trying to fight off a mugger set on taking his shoes, jacket, and the few dollars he had to his name.

He got someone at the hospital to dig out the file and fax it to him, though later he really wished he hadn't.

Hardson wished he didn't know even at sixteen Eliot had had more than a dozen healed broken bones and that his thin medical file had read like a text book case of a survivor of horrific abuse that had to have gone on for years.

Then, two days after he'd been released from the hospital and put into foster care Eliot Spencer disappeared entirely.

Eliot next showed up eight years later on his very first (though far from last) hit list. A Russian crime lord named Nishka had posted a hefty bounty on Eliot's head and an even heaftier one on him being taken alive.

He paid the bounty for Eliot being caught alive and made no secret of what he did to the thief afterwards. Hardison knew it would only take a few keystrokes to find pictures and documentation of what had been done but he knew he didn't want to know.

The next report of Eliot was mercifully only four months later (which meant he couldn't of been there very long, right?) from a surprising source.

Nathan Ford, upon returning to IYS after a job in Cairo reported on why he was over a week late to check in. He'd been captured and held prisoner by a local crime boss. His cell mate, a young retrieval specialist named Eliot Spencer, had helped Nate escape with him after they shared a cell for two weeks.

It made Hardison curious. He hadn't known they'd met as allies. Though, as he thought back to the first jobs, they did seem to settle easily into a working relationship.

Hell, despite Nate's protests Hardison might say they'd been the first on the team to act like friends.

He discovered one other interaction between them. Five years after Cairo Nate went hunting Eliot for IYS. After a long chase they met in an Italian Prison's interrogation room. They talked, finished a (what was curiously an obviously previously started) chess game, and Eliot gave up the location of the merchandise with little hesitation.

Two days later Eliot disappeared from his cell and Italy entirely.

If Hardison didn't know better he might of thought that Nate had been returning a favor.

Hardison liked to think he was the only one who knew their shared history so well. It was a matter of interest and pride for him and every so often, when he thought he could get away with it, he'd indulge his curiosity by looking into their mutual activities outside work and gaining little facts.

Hardison knew, for example, that Eliot had gone to Nate's hotel room after the job in Chicago and stayed there several hours and only after he left did Nate change his plane ticket.

Hardison also knew they'd started meeting after work, though in the beginning he was positive it was jut to play chess or maybe talk about sports or something. Guy stuff. Guys who are friends stuff.

Hardison wasn't sure when he first noticed the change in how they acted around each other. It was subtle enough that it was only subconscious that he registered it. It was little things, things he'd remember later once the secret was out.

But Hardison knew how he found out.

One time after the Juror job he'd been doing some late night follow up when a flag had been raised. Unsure what to do he called Nate, with no answer, then since after a surprisingly painless experience he knew Eliot wasn't angered if he was woken up for an important reason he'd called Eliot.

No answer there either.

Worried he'd traced both their cell's gpses and discovered they were in the same place.

An apartment across town.

Now very worried Hardison had gone to investigate and discovered, after meeting the landlord's daughter who proved Hardison wasn't alone in being insomniac, that Eliot and Nate were living together in every touchy/feely sense of the words.

It came as a shock and that he could manage to not give away what he knew was a sign he'd gained some acting skills.

It wasn't like he had a problem with it… it was just… Nate and Eliot…

When the team broke up Hardison kept track of the others. He knew they wouldn't stay away long. Even as he looked for Parker he knew if he didn't find her it'd only be so long before she came looking for him. Until Nate and Eliot went looking for eachother.

Until they all went looking for each other.

So even when their first reunion didn't go so well and Hardison knew Nate was still being Catholic and pushing Eliot away and Eliot's still being paranoid and fighting instinct to try to be with Nate. Even when the first hours of subtext came up looking like the relationship was heading for a crash landing Hardison knew they'd be all right.

He knew because a little something he'd been smelling even before he consciously recognized what it was. Something he saw in Nate's bathroom. Something that reminded him of one more fact Hardison knew from the times he'd risked teasing Eliot about it.

Nathan Ford did not usually use the kind of shampoo currently sitting his bathroom. He usually used nondescript stuff that didn't have a scent. But there was someone whose favorite fruit was apples, who would never admit it but probably used the shampoo in part because the scent it left behind, someone who Nate was trying very hard to deny he'd been missing for six months.

Yeah, Hardison knew they'd be fine, a half empty bottle of Eliot's favorite shampoo in Nate's bathroom was all the proof he needed.


	16. A Hitter's Work

**Notes**: The fifth in the "Trust and Sobriety" arc.

* * *

**A Hitter's Work  
**_A Hitter's work used to be simple, but working with others tends to complicate things._

* * *

A Hitters Work was simple to sum up.

You went where you were paid to go, hit the people you were paid to hit, and asked only the questions you're being paid to ask. Above all else you remembered that once you've done the above your employer has plenty of incentive to kill you before you get paid for doing what you're being paid to do.

And Eliot actually liked that. It was simple. It was controlled.

Hitters always worked for someone. Even top players like Eliot never freelanced unless they were desperate and that was rare. Good hitters who survived long enough to become one of the best were always in short enough supply they could pick and chose who they wanted to work for.

Which was probably one of the reasons behind one of the ironies of the criminal world. Hitters may always be working for someone but they were always the one in control of the arrangement. If they felt for even a moment like things were getting out of hand, they'd walk out and disappear.

At that point it became a question of how many people they took out on their way out the door.

And everyone who hired them knew to expect just that.

Hitters were hit men, assassins, retrieval specialists. They survived in a world of violence where pain, injury, torture, and early death were facts of life. Their real work was to stay alive in spite of a world out to kill them.

Staying in control, putting themselves and their survival first was the only way to do that.

And Eliot was good at doing his job.

In the eight some years after helping liberate Croatia (and everything that had led him there), Eliot had become recognized as among the best in the business. The three years after he graduated from Thug to Hitter at twenty-four, when he got pulled under to go through what he mentally called "boot camp" in the crime lord Nishka's dungeons, met and learned from Nathan Ford, and ended up neck deep in a civil war, changed him.

When he came out on the other side he wasn't some kid barely off the streets, and barely in control of the violence he was capable of, fighting without even a hint of a compass. When Eliot had reentered the big leagues he was an experienced war vet who spoke seven languages and knew as much about the con world as most grifters.

And he'd learned control. He knew control better than almost anyone else.

For eight years he'd done a Hitter's Work and carved out a life for himself. He'd done what he was paid to do and looked out for himself. He worked alone.

He always worked alone.

Except then, almost like an accident he saw coming but still couldn't avoid, he was working with a team.

Part of it was because of Nate and that whole fucking long story in Cairo and how they met and all that meant to both of them. It was also that Nate understood Hitters. He understood Eliot needed control, that if Eliot got backed into a corner he'd walk away. Nate didn't make the mistake others who tried to work with Hitters made, thinking that just because they could meant a Hitter would protect those around them.

Nate understood that a Hitter had to look out for themselves before all else. Any time a Hitter protected someone else it was just a byproduct of getting the job done. Of doing the job. It had to be.

(He'd ignore the warehouse incident. That hadn't been a Hitter protecting someone that had been moving Hardison out of his way and conveniently toward the door. Even if Hardison hadn't been in his way he was sticking to that.)

But things got weird as he worked with the team. He did his bit of the con. He beat people up. He stayed alive.

But somewhere along the line something shifted. Even as this weird thing between him and Nate took a new (startling, wonderful, terrifying) turn, even as things between them changed, things between the team changed. Hell, things in his own mind changed.

He didn't even know when or how it happened, but like a slow working poison it happened. By the time he realized something was going on it was far to late for an antidote.

Somewhere between Chicago and Juan protecting the team had stopped being a byproduct of getting the job done and become the very definition of his job. A threat to their safety was at best a somewhat personal insult and anything worse was not tolerated a heartbeat longer than he had to allow it for the sake of the con.

They were his crew, his team, more than that if he let himself get sentimental. They were his family.

And you did not mess with his family. It just wasn't a smart thing to do.

So even though it went against every instinct he'd built up over the last eight years.

Even if he knew from a childhood acting as a shield between That Man and his little sister, that in the end pain and violence had their own laws of conservation. It had to happen somewhere and someone had to take it. If you protected someone you had to be willing to take more of your fair share of both.

Even if it meant controlling his bodies reactions and choosing his clothes carefully after fights to keep the team from seeing the bruises and realizing that no matter how good a fighter you were it was a rare day you walked away from combat completely uninjured.

Even if it meant a joke at his expense and not really answering the question to keep the team safe from his world so much different from the one they lived in, and from his own violence.

Even if it meant hyper-vigilance, always, always, always staying on guard, prepared and anticipating the next threat.

It was worth it.

Even if he'd sooner give Hardison hell about his damn car (he never did clean it out the asshole) than admit it, it was worth it.

His family was safe. Just like when he was a kid. He'd take the punishment if it meant his family was safe.

By the time he found himself limping up the stairs to the office knowing he should be laying low but unable to do anything but limp toward where Hardison needed rescuing protecting his family was all that mattered.

Three months later, when they all walked away from each other, he found himself floundering. His relationship with Nate, life with the team, protecting his family, everything that had mattered, the only things that had really mattered for eight years were gone.

He tried to move on but even halfway across the world he couldn't forget.

They were back together in Nate's apartment, plotting (cause really there was no other word for it) how to draw Nate back into the game, when he admitted to himself (he did try to be mostly honest with himself) that he was relaxing a little for the first time in six months. He had all of his team mates where he liked them, nearby. He knew they were all capable but as Nate had said earlier, musing aloud when he maybe wasn't aware Eliot hadn't left, there were wolves in the world.

And it was this Hitter's job to keep them at bay.

That relaxation lasted right up until Sophie mentioned how this was perfect. The con to turn this around was the Turnabout. The Turnabout needed five people. There were only four of them. They just had to get Nate to that point and she knew, they all knew, it would be the last little shove to pull him back in.

After that they could thank his addictive personality for something at least. If they got him for one job they'd have him back for sure.

Hardison and Sophie were chatting excitedly about how best to stage this, though a nervous glance toward Eliot every so often made him wonder if something was wrong. It wasn't until they vaguely mentioned the parts they'd be playing when Eliot realized the issue.

There was some irony there. He'd been thinking about keeping the wolves at bay and now he was playing the sheepdog.

He was playing the sheepdog while Nate was going in as the bag man and they all knew he wouldn't be walking out unscratched. Sophie and Hardison were giving him looks that let him know they knew what he considered his job description and just how much he suddenly did not like this plan.

But he'd go along with it. It was the best choice they had.

He didn't have to like it.

Though with things the way they were between him and Nate right now it would at least be a little easier. A little bit. Maybe.

But he'd do his part and follow orders. Hit who he was on the crew to hit and con who he was here to con and protect them (even when Hardison pulled that stunt with the explosives).

And when Hardison told them all that bull about how he was working on their coms and such and Nate would have to go into the meeting without them Eliot understood it was an attempt to mitigate damages. He understood what it would do to Eliot to listen to Nate getting hurt over the coms, just as well as he understood that Eliot would still have made himself listen just to make sure he wasn't needed (even if there was no way he could get there if he was).

It was how Eliot worked, and Hardison knew just enough to take the choice away. Somehow Eliot wasn't even really surprised that Hardison read the situation so well.

Like Eliot's job their hacker's work had shifted. He wasn't just their hacker. He was in charge of communications, keeping them connected, and getting where the connections might break down, even when computers had nothing to do with it.

No he wasn't surprised then. It wasn't until later, when Parker told him she firmly believed that Nate wouldn't get dead, that he was a little startled.

It seemed a Hitter's work and a Hacker's weren't the only jobs changing.


	17. And Then There was Silence

**Notes:** Sixth in my Trust and Sobriety arc.

* * *

**And Then There Was Silence  
**_There are moments when the noise and chaos stops and in the silence there is clarity._

* * *

There were moments in life when the chaos stopped and the noise halted and there was silence and a second of cold brutal clarity.

When Sam was sick, there had been chaos, there had been noise, and things had spun fast and out of control. Then his heart stopped and then there was silence.

In that moment Nate knew the world that had existed until moments ago would never be the same.

The first time with Eliot had been rushed. They'd been spending more and more time together out of work. Then Eliot brought food to his place and there was noise from the game and Eliot talking to himself as he cooked, then they'd been playing chess, then they'd been not playing chess. They were halfway to the bedroom, only halfway dressed when they'd both stopped, startled into stillness, and then there was silence.

In that moment something changed and something started and they both gave up on what had been holding them back.

The team had been together it was the definition of noise and chaos and it was all he could do to keep them doing what they did, doing good, and not falling apart even as he fell apart. When it ended he convinced himself the quiet would be comforting after living with four thieves that you'd think didn't know how to not cause a scene. But then he got on that private jet and the door closed and there was silence.

In that moment, even if he wouldn't admit it until later, he knew he'd miss them.

When the team came back together they were still the definition of noise and chaos. They took over his apartment, raided his space with the same disregard of privacy they'd always had. There was flurries of movment, streams of conversation, and he kept having to try to dodge Eliot and the conversation he was not ready to have yet. It was too much but then they drew him in, played out the table, and then there was silence.

In that moment they waited and he realized there was only one response he could give. For better or worse this was his life, his team, and he couldn't turn his back on that.

Things went wrong on the con, and they started making things up as they went, and he had to tune out the noise in the backround to keep his head where he was and try not to get shot in the face. He knew it would cost him, to not know what the others were planning, but they were playing this the best they could. Then things spiraled down further as Eliot was dragged in, and Sophie told him to pull his marshals badge. Then they started talking about shooting Eliot and before he could even process it. Before he could even really react, there were the sounds that haunted his nightmares about Eliot: a gunshot and a grunt of pain, the air still for only a second before two more sent Eliot to the ground and then there was silence.

In that moment Nate knew that conversation he hadn't wanted to have with Eliot? He really wanted to have it now. He wanted to have that conversation, and the conversations that would come after it, and everything else he had been being oh so catholic about not wanting. But it was too little too late because there was silence. Eliot was dead and the world that had existed until moments before would never be the same

And it was later, much later, after Sophie broke the silence and Eliot wasn't really dead and the job didn't really fall apart. It was after Hardison bought his building (and really, what the hell?) and left for the day when it was just him and Eliot in Nate's apartment. Nate found a seat and pulled out a stone chessboard he'd kept through the years. He started to set up the pieces, listening to the clicks of stone on stone. Eliot came over and took the side he'd been playing since they'd talked after Chicago more than a year ago, white. He set up the pawns and something seemed to shift between them.

"We should talk about this." Nate said. He hadn't wanted this conversation but after earlier he couldn't justify it. He knew what he wanted and needed and that in the end he could no more run from Eliot than he could the rest of the team.

Eliot paused a moment, considering, before he shrugged. "Whats there to talk about?" He pulled the battered white knight he'd carried with him for the year between when Nate sent it to him after Sam's death until they met again in Chicago, the only thing he'd taken from the apartment they'd shared in L.A., and put it on the table. "I'm ready to start a new game."

Nate nodded, putting his last piece, the black king, in place and nodding at Eliot speaking three words that held as much meaning to them as the words they didn't say. "White moves first."

And then there was silence.


	18. To Castle a King

**Notes:** This is the last in my "Trust and Sobriety" arc as well as the last story I need to post in order to get you all caught up with what I have posted over on LJ. The good news is I have three more stories written and a whole head full of ones not quite put on paper yet so they should continue to come. The bad news is that I'm off to college in less than a week and my productivity will be severely impaired by school. I know, school getting in the way of life is so strange but go figure. Anyway, without further ado...

* * *

**To Castle a King  
**_Hardison has plans, big potentially life threatening plans._

* * *

Hardison had plans. Big Plans. Big, potentially life threatening, plans but he liked to think he knew his teammates well enough that he could predict their reactions. Even if Eliot was so prone to violence there was always a off chance he'd resort to it when he couldn't think of a better solution Hardison was 87% certain that both he and Nate would feel too awkward to hurt him.

If he could do this without getting hurt he would risk it being a waste of time.

After all, if his plan failed they still needed a safe house for clients and such and his project would work fine for that.

So he bought the building Nate lived in and he set about remodeling. Sure, he started with Nate's apartment. That was the obvious thing to do. He "hired" Eliot to help out (though really, he just told Eliot he would get to chainsaw a wall into submission and Eliot was all too eager). They started setting things up, restored Harlem Leverage the Third to a rightful position of prominence. It wouldn't be too long before everything was as it should be.

Though, as the tension in the room increased after Parker was gone, and how the hell did they think they were being subtle when they kept looking at each other like that, Hardison knew it was time for him to excuse himself.

So he slipped out of the apartment with a few backward calls of Later and headed downstairs.

He made his way into the manager's office on the ground floor, already making a list of changes to make. Yeah, he'd be doing most of his work in Nate's apartment but he'd also been one of the few members of the team who actually had use for an office. Sometimes you just needed quiet (or Dr. Who reruns playing in the backround) to concentrate on the important stuff. And sometimes you just needed space where Eliot wasn't around to provide commentary on your video games being unrealistic cause even if he could kick Eliot's ass in video games it was so unfair that Eliot was more badass than any character he played.

He sat down with his laptop on the desk, reviewing and revising his plans (Codename: Castling the King, because everything having to do with Nate by rule had to come back to chess).

Step one: Complete Hacker Lair

Step two: Clear out the Mortens, the Jones, and Michel Bensen. Top floor should be clear and we do not need a cop in the same building of our operation. (Maybe offer his place to Eliot for a practice space in trade for not having to take self-defense lessons from him?)

Step three: Start remodeling, find creative ways to determine wood, color, stylistic choices. Maybe consult Allison? (Note: Did I ever get her number. Was Eliot or Nate friendly with their former landlords? Would they call Eliot or Nate if a friend of theirs called to talk to their fifteen year old daughter about their old apartment? Should probably find a different idea.)

Step four: Research kitchen fixtures. Revision: Leave this to the expert.

Step five: Do research to determine if Martha Stewart has committed any crimes Leverage Consulting and Associates could fix.

Step Six: Figure out some way to assure a person that there are no bugs in a location.

Step Seven: Determine a way to tell Eliot and Nate you not only know they were living together in the touchy sense of the phrase but you've also have made them an apartment to do so once more if they want. Preferably in a way that won't result in them killing you.

He sat back in his seat. Yeah he had a plan that would probably get him killed, but he needed a little adventure in his life. Besides this was safer, for them, him and everyone else.

The people in this city knew Nathan Ford, knew he lived here, and with every job they did the chances of someone trying to get retribution increased. If Nate and Eliot were living together their king would be safely castled.

Also, if they felt strongly about keeping up appearances, Nate could continue to keep up his current apartment. Traveling back and forth in hallways without windows and security cameras would mean no one would be the wiser. Not to mention there wouldn't be a landlord's fifteen year old daughter blabbing to the nice man she met at four in the morning about the building's resident gay couple.

It would also mean that there would never be the problem of "Where's Nate and Eliot?" no questions about whose place they were at or traipsing halfway across the city because they had their phones turned off.

And there were a dozen other reason it would be better that when they do get a place together again (because really, he knew they would. He'd just had to turn the camera in the living room of Nate's place off because they'd stopped playing chess now. He could reason that Nate was helping Eliot take off his shirt so Nate could check the bruises the explosives had left behind, Hardison was going to go with that.), they got it in this building.

Hardison didn't really acknowledge the reason why he was doing this whole plot thing. It was there in the back of his mind, popping up every fifteen minutes like those reminders that you had to update something that were just annoying enough that you almost bothered to hack the computer to stop them. He knew why he wanted this, why he was doing this.

Somewhere in the months they'd been separated, in the time he'd been floundering around, looking for Parker and something that meant something anymore, he'd had a dream. He had a dream that they hadn't separated after the David Jobs, that they'd taken up house in the mansion Hardison owned and they all moved in together there. In his dream they all lived together like a family should, in their own castle fortified to protect the king and all the pieces.

He knew it was just some distant fantasy, spawned from his time in Nana's house with five other foster siblings and the chaos of a full home. He knew the others weren't like him, didn't get lonely sometimes, didn't spend hours on the internet with people he'd never really meet because it was better than looking around a huge and empty apartment. They liked their space. Hell, he'd liked his space, at least he'd thought so.

It was a dream. But it was one he wanted to make true.

The night wore on. He turned on the security system in Nate's apartment when it seemed they'd forgotten to do so (though, really, Hardison knew they didn't need it. Eliot would be awake and fighting before the alarm went off if anyone tried to break in).

Absently Hardison checked the gps locations of Sophie and Parker's phones, noting they were both in the hotel rooms he knew they'd rented until they could find places to stay. He clicked open the window where he'd been running the guest lists through a cross reference database of the names and all known aliases of everyone he knew they'd come in contact with before. As he suspected, no red flags. Nothing to worry about there.

With security for the night taken care of to his satisfaction (and really, if he was honest with himself, he was more satisfied with himself for that then the whole Whitehouse email thing) Hardison leaned back. He was still wide-awake, wired from caffeine and the insomnia that seemed a side effect of his brain working overtime as often as it did. He'd only been up for a little over twenty-four hours so he probably wouldn't be getting much sleep tonight.

He could get online, play some WOW and level his rouge a little, or maybe work on the security system or updating the alias books for the team now that they were back together. He did actually have things he should probably be doing.

But he found himself pulling up the tenant roster and beginning an internet search and planning the ways best to clear out the tenants he needed to move in ways that were wins for all parties involved but didn't raise suspicions.

He wasn't sure when he nodded off, sinking back into the comfortable office chair and into sleep.

But when he woke a couple hours later, the laughter and chaos of a family running around a castle in the middle of Boston following him even as he woke up, he found himself staring at the computer screen. Remembering what his Nana had always told him about good methods to make sure you reached your goals he opened a new word document, typed out a few words, bolded and enlarged them, and printed it out. He thumb tacked the paper to the wall above where his computers sat and nodded to himself.

"Castle the King (and the rest of the pieces to)"

Now all he had to do was figure out how.


	19. Roses

**Notes:** Originally written for the prompt "Red Roses" on comment fic over on LJ for some reason I never actually posted to the prompt.  
**Notes:** Drabble

* * *

**Roses**  
_They can be romantic sometimes._

* * *

It shouldn't have mattered to him. He wasn't some high school chick. He was the team's muscle. He was tough, macho, unromantic. He'd dated his way across the world almost.

Sure he'd never been in a relationship quite like this so maybe…

His mind was rambling and he was trying to make his mouth work and the worst part was Nate was smiling like he had known exactly the effect this would have.

"Well, you want them?"

Eliot wordlessly reached out, taking the dozen blood red roses Nate had brought and pulling him into the apartment and into a kiss.


	20. Not Going Anywhere

**notes: **New arc time!

**Not Going Anywhere  
**_Nate only knew a few seconds before Eliot spoke that the rules of the con had changed drastically._

_

* * *

_

Nate knew only a fraction of a second before Eliot said it that the rules of the con had changed.

"Just go…" Eliot more grunted than said, pushing away Sophie and Hardison. He leaned against the wall next to him, one arm wrapped around his ribs and pressing against where the bullet had grazed his side. He was all tension and shakes in a way Nate alone recognized as danger. The job had gotten under his skin from the beginning, add between the beating he'd taken before the rescue they were pulling off and the bullet he'd nearly taken getting Sophie to safety and Nate could see his control shattering.

"You're hurt." Sophie said, trying to get Eliot to let her see the wound to administer first aid or something.

He shoved her away violently, sending her sprawling to the ground. "Run." He stammered out. "RUN" He said again, the threat in his voice clear."

Nate turned to Hardison, Sophie, and Parker. "Get out of here. Now."

Hardison hesitated only one second, clearly worried about Nate staying before Parker pulled him along with her.

"Nate" Eliot said again, desperation mixing with his voice. He was curling around himself, breath coming in ragged pants Nate recognized. Eliot was so close to breaking, that violence in his head, that "Black Knight" they'd even joked about once, getting loose and just running rampant taking out everything. He was fighting to stay collected, not let the other get hurt when he lost it but it was only a matter of time. Nate could see the sheen of sweat and hear the pain in his breath he hadn't shown until now, like holding himself together actually hurt him.\

Nate should leave, let him let go. There weren't any innocents here to get hurt but…

Nate remembered years ago, during those two weeks in Cairo, back in that long dull hell that had ended with them escaping together and him first seeing that monster Eliot barely kept in check. After it was over and Eliot came back to himself…

In those two weeks Eliot had lain close to death's door, been beaten, been shot, faced death more than once. He had never looked even nearly as terrified as he had when he came down and found himself covered in someone else's blood with no memory of dispatching the eleven guards laying in pieces on the floor around him.

"Just go…" Eliot said again, sounding more like a plea than anything else.

Instead Nate stepped closer. It may be stupid but he couldn't let Eliot go through that again.

"Don't wanna hurt you Nate." Eliot hissed through clenched teeth.

"You won't." Nate said softly, pulling the smaller man close, pressing a hand against his wounded side to help staunch the flow of blood. Nate knew he should be afraid, any second Eliot could loose it and there was no guarantee he wouldn't attack the closest thing, but Nate had rarely felt calmer.

Eliot needed him and it might have been ten years since he'd spent two weeks helping a broken young thief pull himself back together but some things didn't change. Even after ten years, even after watching from a distance as Eliot turned into who he was today…

Eliot needing him made putting his fears aside as easy as breathing.

"You're not gonna hurt me." Nate whispered into Eliot's hair, easing the two of them to the ground. They had to move soon, they were so far from where they'd just rescued Eliot they were safe, but for the moment they needed stillness. He held Eliot close, his head leaning against Nate's chest over his heart. "Just relax. I'm not going anywhere."


	21. Stay

**Notes:**Followup to _Not Going Anywhere_. As our heros deal with the fallout of finding out about Eliot's problem. It was supposed to be a short peice between Nate and Eliot but my need to develop plot took over.

* * *

**Stay  
**_Eliot broke the first rule._

* * *

The worst disasters come when something you've always taken for granted stops working. Nate knew this. He'd seen dozens of cases where something simple, a circuit breaker, a fire extinguisher, a car's breaks, things people never really thought about what would happen if they just suddenly didn't work when you needed them, did just that. The results tended to be catastrophic.

A job pressing a little close to home went south and suddenly the control he'd started to believe Eliot would never really lose had nearly shattered. In the space of a few minutes he'd broken down, that violence escaping and lashing out while the others ran for their lives. Nate had stayed behind. He'd stayed behind and held Eliot together and they'd all gotten away in one piece.

But some damage was already done. Nate just wasn't sure how much yet.

It had been hard to explain what had happened that day to the team. None of them had taken the truth very well and the fact it had been kept secret so long made it worse. In there eyes a bomb had been sitting next to them in meetings and Nate had never saw fit to mention to them that he might lose it at the wrong word.

Adrenalin was still running high and everyone was feeling stressed. A few unkind things that they'd probably regret saying later, not that any of them would admit it, were hurled at him and Eliot until they realized neither was making an attempt to defend themselves.

No one on the team was used to blaming someone willing to admit they'd done wrong even if they made to pretense of wishing they could change it.

Nate let the silence linger, hoping that once the adrenalin faded they'd be able to listen to what he'd say.

It also gave him a chance to figure it out.

After another moment of silence Eliot got up and left the apartment without a word.

Nate let him go. He needed time alone and if the team needed to vent their collective tempers a while longer he might as well not be in the room to hear it.

He looked at the three left in the room then at his watch. "I've got ten minutes to kill. So questions? Comments? I am not kicking him off the team so I think now might be a good time to deal with this." Parker had raised her hand. "Yes Parker?"

"If he's so dangerous why didn't he kill you?"

Nate let out a slow breath, hoping to navigate this without breaking rule #8 and letting that little secret out. He wasn't sure the team could handle that right now. "We have a history, I saved his life ten years ago." The others looked surprised. "My guess is when you share a cell with someone for two weeks and they're the only reason you're loitering on death's porch instead of going right in and you've got the protective instinct Eliot does? You tend to develop a driving need not to be the one to kill them." He grinned a little and took a sip from his coffee. "He didn't actually lose it. Never seen him come that close without going all the way but he held on."

The room was so silent he might have been speaking to himself. Then there was a little gasp from Parker and Nate looked over to her and suddenly she was staring at him with a "I know something you don't want me to know" grin and Nate groaned internally.

But strangely, she said nothing.

"You know… River did up being a advantage to the crew." Hardison said carefully, not completely sure of what he was saying or if he said it right. "And it wasn't her fault she was the way she was." It took Nate a minute to recognize it was a question.

"It's not. He never told me what happened but he's always talked like it's external. Something someone did to him."

"It makes sense." Sophie said, the last to break her silence and in some way Nate felt as if something had shifted. They'd moved from completely rejecting to processing and readjusting. It wasn't over but the hardest part was. "It explains a lot." She gave one final sigh. "It's just a lot to take in, and it would have been nice to know months ago. What would have happened if you hadn't been there?"

Nate winced mentally. "He'd of held on until you got away." He had to be honest though. "Or he might have attacked. I'd put my money on Eliot but I can't be sure. What I can say is six months ago I don't think anyone other than me would have survived." He put down the mug. "Here's the truth of the matter. He's getting worse. Hes nearly lost it a few times and he all but lost it today. Being comfortable, safe, with people he trusts means he's subconsciously letting down his guard." He traced a finger along the rim of the cup. "But I have a theory that the reason why he's losing control is the same as the reason you all got out of there safely today. He's getting worse because he's getting better."

No, Nate didn't know what had made Eliot who he was. But the scars Eliot had on his body even when they first met had marked Eliot a survivor of a lifetime of abuse on a level Nate didn't want to consider. Eliot didn't have to say anything for Nate to understand the survival instincts that had morphed into that violence had been beaten into him long before he became a thief.

It was ironic. After all the talk about Nate needing the chase and being in the game Nate knew better than anyone how much finally having something even remotely resembling a family was helping Eliot.

With a sigh Nate stood, checking his watch. "He should be mostly packed by now."

Without further explanation Nate left the conference room.

Nate let himself into the small apartment Eliot had commandeered to turn into a gym space he used to practice and train the team in self-defense. He watched wordlessly as Eliot packed weapons and the few odds and ends he cared about into an unremarkable black duffle bag.

"So you're leaving?" Nate asked, bordering casual.

"Have to." Eliot grumbled. "Today shouldn't of happened. I let my guard down. I lost control. They're our rules Nate. I broke the big one. Game over." He grumbled something that might have had something to do with spending too much time with Hardison.

Nate nodded, ignoring the way his stomach dropped. He'd come in here knowing that Eliot would be packing to leave. Way back in Chicago, after it turned out it would be far from a walk away Nate had told Eliot the moment he lost control he was done. Nate hadn't been willing to risk lives. But now it didn't matter. No it did matter, a lot, but differently. Things had changed.

God had things changed.

But this relationship, this team, this family and all it's fucked up parts was the best thing any of them had going. They had to stick together.

"I thought you were a bad guy. What's a rule or two broken?" Nate tried, buying time for his mind to put some plan together. He had thought Eliot was preparing for the worst since that was what he did.

It looked like Eliot was actually leaving.

Eliot slowly turned away from the pile of books on a table by the back window he'd been sorting through to look at Nate. "I could have killed you. Hell, I should have killed you. I don't know how I didn't…" His voice faded. "I got a job offer. Russian mob stuff. Potential for carnage, screams, blood. Stuff I'm good at."

Nate felt like he'd been punched in the gut. Since the beginning of the team Eliot had always made sure Nate knew when to expect him back. Eliot wasn't good with goodbyes, telling him when he was going to be back was Eliot's way of saying "see you later".

Saying nothing at all was how they'd parted ways every time over the years. It was all left up to chance.

"Eliot." Nate said, crossing over to the man unsure what he intended to do besides stop him from walking out that door.

"Rule #19 Nate" Eliot said habitually, referencing their rule for not mixing up pleasure with work and keeping intimacy out of the offices, or what passed as their offices now.

Nate wants to make a scene, demand to know when he'll be back, when he's coming back, say damn it to the rules and just kiss him until he agrees to stay…

But they are two broken men, and this isn't love, and they've been telling themselves that for more than a year now because they knew this day would come and it was supposed to make it easier when it did. Nate nods slowly, allowing himself to put a hand on Eliot's shoulder and lean over just enough to place a chaste, fatherly kiss on Eliot's forehead.

When he feel's Eliot shaking a little, trying to hide how much their attempt to make this parting easy failed, it doesn't help as much as he'd have thought. Eliot opened his mouth to say something then changed his mind sighing before saying something else. "The owners of my old apartment in L.A. still take my mail. White moves first."

Nate nodded but didn't respond. He didn't think he'd be starting their new chess match for awhile. Better to make this a clean break.

Eliot seemed to agree. Without another word he grabbed the black bag and opened the apartment door to the hallway.

Hardison, Sophie, and Parker stood blocking the other side stern expressions on their faces, though Parker ruined the effect by looking between them and giggling a little to herself.

Eliot's confusion turned into a pissed expression. "I'm leaving already."

Something was wrong. Nate realized even as Eliot stood there waiting for them to get out of his way that something was wrong. Eliot had been adamant about quitting this team when he wanted to, now he was running away?

It took another second to realize the one thing in that entire conversation he hadn't done.

Nate closed his eyes. God was he an idiot.

"We aren't here to hassle you." Parker said firmly.

"Well we kind of are, but not about leaving." Hardison cut in then shrugged. "Okay maybe about leaving but not like you think."

Sophie put her hands on her hips, every bit annoyed and attitude. "Give us one good reason to let you leave us hanging like this."

"Thought you wanted me gone. That there was something wrong with me." Eliot looked to the other three.

"You've been saying that about me for more than a year, you don't seem to mind too much." Parker said with a shrug.

"What Parker means Eliot is we're a team." Sophie said with a smile. "We'll take you as you are and trust you to keep us safe like you always have."

"'sides who else is gonna fight off the reevers and Really piss off the alliance?" Hardison put in.

Eliot ignore him and turned back to face Nate, a small smile on his face like when he managed to trick him. It took Nate a moment to realize maybe Eliot had never wanted to really leave. Things had changed and the rules were different and Eliot had to know that he was getting worse. Eliot knew Nate wouldn't make him leave but they were all stubborn. Forcing them to let Eliot stay could have torn the team apart.

By playing the martyr, willingly leaving to a lonely fate he forced the team to stop feeling offended and decide how they felt about this.

They had asked him to stay. He was a part of the team by mutual consent, not sufferance. They'd accepted him as he was and they could move forward from this.

Nate winced mentally at the thought that their hitter was one of the better cons he knew. Maybe they were spending a little too much time together.

"So what do you say Nate?" He asked, the grin fading a little.

"Will you stay with the team? We still need you." Nate said. The relived smile was real and Nate wondered just how much of this had been con. How much had been Eliot honestly ready to run from all of this. "It won't be easy."

"It never is." Eliot said, putting down the bag. "But I've got plenty of fight left in me."

Hardison and Parker cheered before Hardison went off to make some popcorn and said a team celebration for togetherness was in order. Parker gave an exaggerated wink at Nate before dragging Sophie away to help her with something.

"Does Parker…?" Eliot started before he shook his head. "Of course she'd be the first ta figure out. There's somthin' wrong with her." He shook his head one more time and went back into the apartment to put things away.

Nate leaned against the doorframe, noting one of Eliot's favorite throwing knives had never been pried from the wall.

The biggest disasters always seemed to come when the things you'd taken for granted stop working right.

But so did change.


	22. Blessed be the Cracked

**Notes: **This follows a few days after the events of Not Going Anywhere and Stay.

**Note the Second of Great Importance: **This is the end of this fic but not the end of this Verse. The story continues in the fic "Fathers" which can be found on my profile page.

* * *

**Blessed Be the Cracked  
**_For they are the ones to let in the light._

* * *

Twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag.

There's just something wrong with her.

Champion of the creepyness contest she and Hardison had going.

And as it turned out the first on the team to figure out there was something going on between him and Nate.

Parker.

Just Perfect.

And just four short days after that really Really long day where the others found out about the Black Knight and he nearly lost his place on the team and a long week got a hell of a lot longer here he was. On recon for a mission.

With Parker.

Just Perfect.

Logically speaking Eliot knows why she's here. He'd been captured and injured during the last job and even though he was fine by his standards the others were being careful with him now. He wanted to be irritated, to complain that he'd been dealing with this mess his whole life and that just because they found out didn't mean he suddenly needed to be babysat.

But Nate had said to give them a little time to adjust. Let it sink in. Let them accept this new knowledge and they'll see he hasn't changed. So if Sophie wanted to send someone along to keep an eye on him he'd endure it.

Even if that someone was Parker who was probably less sane than he was.

Though if this meant Sophie thought Parker was the sane one of them there would need to be some serious talks when they got home from this.

The job they were doing was small time, something to keep busy with a few towns over, too close to bother flying. Just a little information check up. Nothing too exciting or earth shattering but it meant a long time driving back and forth.

A long time alone with Parker in a car on a highway.

In honesty it wasn't as bad as Eliot would have thought it would be. Parker mostly stared out the window looking like she was in some kind of trance induced by the lights flashing by. It was quiet, and Eliot found his mind drifting from subject to subject, fingers tapping a soft rhythm on the steering wheel.

He'd reached the kind of zen you can only reach driving an empty stretch of highway late at night when Parker broke the silence she'd spent the last hour or two in. "What's it like?"

Eliot furrowed his eyebrows. "Whats what like?"

"Being with Nate?"

He groaned inwardly. Of course she'd ask. "Not somethin' I'm sharing."

"I'm just curious. I wanna know what it's like. Is it like in movies?"

"Really not going to talk about my sex life Parker." With anyone else Eliot would have been pissed off. But with Parker? She probably was just really curious to what gay sex was like. But really? He was Not going there with her.

"that's not what I meant." She said with a pout.

Eliot let out a long-suffering sigh. "What did you mean?"

"What's it like to fall in love?"

Eliot just barely kept himself from reacting. It was strange. After eight months it was Parker who was the first to use the forbidden four-letter word to describe the thing between him and Nate. He mentally flinched away from the word. "Not in love it's just."

"Just what?" She pressed, curious.

"Trust." Eliot said. Out loud it sounded just as bad and made even less sense.

"oh." Parker said.

A second later there was a hand touching a part of his anatomy he was unused to being touched while he was driving and it was all Eliot could do to not crash into the shoulder in surprise. "What The Hell? PARKER!" He barked and hit her hand away.

"But I trust you and you trust me. You said yourself that you and Nate were having sex and that it was just trust."

Eliot let out a long slow breath, mentally counting to ten in Arabic and then Russian to try to avoid completely losing it at Parker. "It's not what I meant. You don't… just don't do that Parker."

"Then what is it?" She pressed.

"Complicated." Eliot replied feeling like a teenage boy. He so hoped they were getting there soon. Only he wouldn't put it past Parker to have this conversation in front of everyone in Nate's apartment.

"Then make it simple." Parker said, sounding like that was of course the most logical and easy thing to do. "Please?"

Eliot sighed, not responding right away. He could feel Parker's eyes on him and he knew she was waiting for an answer and before he really meant it he was forming words to try to answer her question in a way she'd get. "It's kinda like rappellin'" He said finally. "Sometimes it starts out careful, checking the details learning what you can makin' preparations. Sometimes you just dive into it quick but you jump off that ledge and hope you did and judged right. You fall free and it feels great. Sometimes you fall all the way. Sometimes you get it right and bounce back and hang there, high as cloud nine and safe for as long as it lasts."

He sees her nod out of the corner of his eye and she goes to look back out the window and somehow he's not embarrassed about getting all metaphorical. Parker was Parker and crazy as she was she took him as he was. She took his words in stride and understanding for once and maybe that was why he'd answered in the first place.

The rest of the drive passed quietly and the recon went by as well as could be hoped.

In honesty he almost forgot that little conversation, trying to keep up with Parker was a job enough without brooding. It was a few days later, when Eliot was working to convert the apartment in Nate's building Hardison had given him to turn into a training area for himself and the team (and likely to fill the job Eliot's office had once done, give him a little space to work off frustration on inanimate objects as opposed to team mates), that he was reminded of what he'd said.

Nate came into the apartment with a confused look on his face and what looked like a harness in his hands.

Eliot raised an eyebrow, wordlessly asking what was up.

Nate said, looking even more confused. "Parker gave me this and told me to give it to you and tell you it's not safe to repel with someone if neither of you will admit you're repelling." He let the statement hang in the air like a question.

"Leave the harness. I'll ask her what she meant later." Eliot said with a shake of his head.

"Not too much later." Nate said as he put it down. "The rest of the team's heading home soon."

Eliot nodded and Nate turned to leave. "Nate." Eliot said, not sure what he meant to say when Nate turned back around. Well, he wouldn't admit what he almost said. "Forget it. I'll tell ya later."

Nate nodded and left.

Eliot picked up the harness, shaking his head as he recognized it had been adjusted to fit him. He looked it over, identifying padding put in places to help make it easier to be worn for a long time.

Parker…

He couldn't help but smile just a little. Maybe…

Parker was twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag.

But wasn't that the point of that saying?

Blessed be the cracked, for they are the ones who let in the light.


End file.
